


this tornado loves you

by evocates



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman/Superman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Superman (Comics), Superman - All Media Types, Superman/Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Alzheimer's Disease, And Sometimes He Talks to Them, Angst, Ballad 39: Tam Lin, Batman's Parents Are Dead, Breathplay, Cat-Skin, Control Issues, Dom/sub Undertones, Dream Sex, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fantasizing, Fluff and Humor, For the sake of the greater good, Fucking Machines, Fucking that's more like fighting, Identity Issues, Identity Porn, M/M, Manipulation, Mental Health Issues, More Bat-manipulations, Mutually Unrequited, New 52, POV Outsider, Possessive Behavior, Powers used for sex, Roughness, Snippets, Wingfic, paranoid schizophrenia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-09 19:22:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 23,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3261470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocates/pseuds/evocates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short pieces - more like short films rather than of full stories - revolving around Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne. Some will be canon, some will deviate a little from canon, some will be from completely different universes. Prompts/inspirations can be found in the notes before/after each one.</p><p>Not everything will be posted (because they're less fic than a single image). For the full list, please visit <a href="http://evocating.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-dose-of-superbat">daily dose of superbat</a> on tumblr. Each snippet stands alone (except for Chapters 18 and 20), so read at will.</p><p>Title stolen from a song by Neko Case.</p><p>
  <b>Update 20 Feb 2015: The end; I'm done posting and writing.</b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. hiroshima mon amour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [_guang dao zhi lian_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuz6QvKxGPw). ([translated lyrics](http://lyricstranslate.com/en/guangdao-zhi-lian-%E5%B9%BF%E5%B2%9B%E4%B9%8B%E6%81%8B-love-hiroshima-%E5%BB%A3%E5%B3%B6%E4%B9%8B%E6%88%80.html))

His hands are scarred, knuckles over-large; warm-yet-cold, smooth-yet-rough, calluses overlaying over each other. A warrior's hands, used to shifting his grip around the handles of a hundred different weapons. Sometimes they catch on Clark's smooth skin, and those blue-lightning eyes will turn upwards.

_You're not very used to rough work, are you,_ he whispers into Clark's ear. His Punjabi is lilting, every syllable caressed before breathed over the nape of Clark's neck.

In the distant mountains of India, near the borders to Tibet, they move together in tandem. There is grass under Clark's hands, air caught in his throat. He has never felt the need to breathe as he does under this man, this stranger whose name he doesn't ask even now, when their bodies are fitting together like a hand in glove. _Silk_ , the wolf-stranger has murmured. _You feel like silk._

Clark is in this desolate, empty place looking for some kind of enlightenment. For some way in which he can make a difference with the ink of his pen instead of the inhuman strength of his body. He does not know why the stranger is here. His imagination gives a reason: to try to find out how to make a difference in this sprawl-wide world of theirs.

Later, panting, Clark takes those hands. He meets the tips of callused fingers with his tongue, and tastes sparks that burrows deep within him and seats itself into his nerves. He breathes in and locks the salt-scent of the stranger's skin there, and, somehow, that gives him strength to still his feet as he watches the man with blue-lightning eyes walk away.

Years later, he saw those hands again. There are more scars and calluses now, bracketed by oily shadows. But he knows them, and he finds himself laughing, tangling those fingers within his own and bringing them to his lips.

Salt and lightning. 

Clark wraps him up in his red cape ( _making headlines, writing truths,_ all that his travels has taught him) before they rise upwards until cities disappear and they are surrounded only by wind.

His name is Bruce. His name is Batman. He's leaning against Clark now, his breath hot on his over-heated skin.  
 _  
You make me believe in fairytales_ , he says. There are shadows in his voice.

Sinking his fingers beneath the cowl that seems woven from darkness itself, Clark lifts it off. He gives Bruce a smile. He hears the catch in his breath, the butterfly pinned at the back of his throat.  
 _  
B,_ he says, a fat little letter that distills down to the core of the once-stranger and fills Clark's mouth entirely. _You helped me learn to love when the lightning strikes_.


	2. my love, i am the speed of sound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Bruce and Clark are in the middle of having sex in Clark's apartment when something big decides to crash nearby. The closer it gets the more Clark re-positions Bruce to get a better angle. Bruce knows Clark should have stopped and responded to the imminent disaster and he'll never admit this but he loves and feels special that Clark doesn't for him. This is their best sex. He doesn't know at all that Clark asked Supergirl to cover for him for a while. You can definitely reword this.”  
> \- Anonymous in my tumblr ask

There's thunder in the apartment.

Not metaphorical. Nothing to do with the way that Clark is pressing him hard against the wall, the El shield on his uniform a scorching brand against Bruce's naked back. _Actual_ thunder; the sound of something heavy and huge slamming into a nearby building. Plaster falls into Bruce's hair, falls onto his eyelashes.

He's reaching back before he knows it, gripping onto Clark's wrist. Holding tight, nails digging in between the fragile, diamond-strong bones. Clark's breath ghosts over his hair in reply, a huff that's almost a laugh, and plaster rains down on Bruce's shoulder as Clark wraps an arm around his waist.

_I'm not going anywhere,_ he says, his accent halfway between Midwest-Kent and alien-Kal. Superman's crispness is gone - the end consonants are slurred.

Bruce shudders. Tips his head back as Clark lifts off of the ground. His cock presses even deeper inside, an insistent invasion, and Bruce groans out as he feels the length slide right over his prostate.

_Clark,_ he grits out. A reminder, a reprimand, a plea. His hand clutches tighter onto Clark's wrist even as his foot kicks out at his shin.Success is in knowing what you want, he thinks suddenly. He's floating in mid-air, groundless, and he doesn't know what he wants.

Metropolis in front of him. Neon billboards. Fluorescent lights. Clark has set him down at the window, pushing it slightly open so half of Bruce is outside. Wind whips into his face. Smell of smoke in his nose. Fire. Four blocks over, a grey cloud floats.

Lightning in the apartment in the form of a shattering roar.  
  
 _Clark,_ he says again.  
  
 _Mm?_ Clark hums. His hand crawls up Bruce's chest, half-following the trail of scars. His fingers close around Bruce's throat, turning his head. Making him look into blue, blue eyes.  


There are no words for that shade. That is a fact: Bruce knows over twenty languages, and he has looked for a name in all of them. This is purely alien; purely Clark.

And they are warm on him. Hot. Hot like the fingers on his throat. A layer of skin that separates that inhuman strength from his carotid sheath. Bruce's pulse roars in his ears; beats like dragonfly wings. His breathing is shuddering, shattering. Metropolis sears the back of his eyelids. His lips form Clark's name again, noiseless. This time, a prayer, almost.  
 _  
Bruce_ , Clark exhales. The shape of his name in the air itself, formed out of liquid heat, sliding over Bruce's mouth. Bruce's lips part, and he swallows down the air, lets it crawl inside his lungs and write Clark's name on the insides of his throat.

When Clark draws back and thrusts inside him again, Bruce's mind blanks out entirely. His orgasm feels like being inside a falling star.

There's smoke on Clark's tongue as he kisses him. Bruce returns it; lets himself go pliant in Clark's arms. Lets out the soft groan when Clark pulls out of him, still hard, and turns him around until the windowsill is digging against his back. He spreads his legs, throws one over Clark's shoulder, and digs his hands into space-black hair.

Clark smiles at him, sweet and mischievous. His finger strokes over Bruce's lip, follows the curve.  
 _  
You keep telling me that I should let Kara work alone once in a while_ , he says.

Bruce reaches out. His hand splays on top of the sigil of the House of El, the sign of hope that all in the world reaches out for. Smooth, heavy cloth bunches under his fingers, and he pulls Clark forward and kisses him hard. At the same time, he pulls the window close entirely. 

Useless to stop Clark's hearing, but symbolic, all the same.

He smiles, all teeth, and his eyes are narrowed into flint-blue slits.  
 _  
Mine_ , he growls.

Clark's hands grip his wrist, and Bruce hisses under his breath as he slides back in. Digs his heel against the small of Clark's back, and holds him close, holds him there.  
 _  
Yes_ , Clark breathes. His lips slide over Bruce's neck, pressing butterfly kisses to the broken capillaries in the shape of his fingers that only he can see. _Yes_.


	3. kansan sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Heat_. Like lying next to a sun. Bruce scowls. Pulls the blankets up further, a useless shield against the onslaught; useless because he can feel the warmth crawl between the thin silk of his pajamas and worming its way into his veins.

(A flash of a memory: in the bathroom as he changes, aware of Kent’s presence right outside the thin wooden door that separates them. A sudden thought of red and blue and x-ray vision. Bruce wonders what his subconscious is trying to tell him before he dismisses it. The build might be almost right, but there’s nothing alien in Kent’s eyes. Not like what Superman has never been able to hide.)

Unbidden, his eyes are darting sideways. He catches dark blue at the corners - Kent’s gaze, refracting off the glasses. He wears them to _bed_ , it seems, and it’s on the tip of his tongue: _did no one in Kansas tell you that you’re not supposed to wear glasses to bed, hayseed?_

But it never gets a chance.

"Okay. This is just awkward," Kent says.

Bruce snorts, using the sound to weigh down the relief he feels at the awkward silence having been broken. Even if it’s something so inane.

"You think?" he drawls. _Never been in a bed with another man before,_ he wants to taunt, but swallows it all back because he can still feel the scorching, living flame of Kent’s body, barely an inch away from his. Kent would likely rise to the challenge, and Bruce isn’t willing to risk whatever _else_ that might rise if Kent gets even closer.

He opens his mouth. But whatever he might say is gone, cut to pieces, when the shrill alarm shrieks. Bruce shoots up in bed, half-Bat in an instant, eyes narrowed. He turns, halfway to telling Kent to stay in the room while he checks… on some swimsuit models or something.

But Kent is sitting up too, and there’s a look in his eyes that Bruce finds familiar.

What a curious thing: calculation from a farmboy.

There’s a series of drawers in Bruce’s mind, filled with information and memories; things relevant and interesting to the Bat. In that one second when he looks at Kent, he realises: there is an extra drawer, and it’s labelled Clark Kent.

It sits right next to Superman’s.


	4. lofty towers I see down-razed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
> _Sonnet 64,_ William Shakespeare

Like a cliff his body has held out against the tides of time. They were once slow tides, lapping gently at the base. But they had grown larger and larger throughout the years, the winds fed by each bruise and broken bone. Wearing him down, piece by piece. But his will is strong, stubborn, and rock is reinforced. Sheer marble, already scarred by the insistent crashes of water and slashes of salt, becomes even more marked by steel scaffoldings and concrete wound throughout.

But it seems the base is weak. It wears away too quickly. Perhaps there is acid in the waters, biting, nipping. Constant threats, constant wears. His will does not give way, but perhaps he has been holding too tight, and his own finger-marks have left bruises on his memories.

It starts small: location of pieces of his equipment; timings of unimportant meetings; a certain turn down the hallway of the Watchtower.

The first time he realises, heart-in-throat: Alfred’s birthday. Clark’s absence, his acidic comment. Dick’s odd look.

 _He’s back in Smallville, Bruce,_ his son says. _It’s his Earth-day today, and he always spends that day with his parents_.

Marble is slipping into the tides. Sands through his hands. He is barely forty and out of time.

It was not a broken back. It was something smaller. A defective gene, perhaps, carried on from his mother’s family. Or his father’s. Medical technology from New Genesis can heal a broken sternum and rescue him from the jaws of death, but it cannot heal the way a gaping maw in opening in his mind, swallowing his memories.

Once: the sound of his name in Clark’s voice has been inked into the insides of his lungs; the heat of his skin seared into his nerves, keeping his warm even during the coldest stakeouts. Once: the strength of those fingers on his shoulders, on his neck, holding him up imprinted into the depth of his bones; the brilliance of the smile lingering on the back of his eyelids.

Now: he sits in the darkness of a cave- the Cave (capitalisation like pebbles in his mouth, pressing hard against gums and tongue, reminding, reminding). Photographs cover the screen of one wall, illuminated by a light above. He runs his hands over them. Tastes the names over and over, the futile hope of a man clutching onto oil-slicked sand.

_Damian. Kara. Stephanie. Cassandra. Timothy. Jason. Diana. Dick._

_Clark. Kal. Superman. Clark. Kal. Superman. Clark-Kal-Superman. ClarkKalSuperman._

Now: the sound of wind inside the Cave. A flash of red and blue at the corner of his eyes. He turns. The upward curve of lips mean a smile. He tries it now.

”Clark,” he says. The question does not hover in the air. It has seeped deep between them, a living shadow. His fingers twitch, and he reaches outwards until they - furrowed with old wounds he no longer remembers receiving - tangle around cloth as red as ones waved in front of bulls.

”Bruce.”

Clark walks towards him.

Now: the sound of his name in this half-stranger’s voice is new every time. Now: the heat of Clark’s skin makes him shiver, for he does not remember ever having felt this warmth. Now: the strength of those fingers on his jaw makes him want to jerk away and lean in at the same time - unchanged, but the reasons has him grasping at air.

"Bruce."

The smile is not nearly as brilliant as it once was. Faded, half-broken. There’s something wrong with the edges. Bruce frowns, his fingers at the corners of Clark’s mouth, pushing them back upwards. He closes his eyes.

This is what he remembers best: Clark’s kiss, bitter salt in his mouth, and the minute tremours beneath his hands that he cannot stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... I'm... sorry?


	5. a bad week

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
> _High Fidelity_ , Nick Hornby (from [aseaofquotes](http://www.aseaofquotes.com/post/109444648117/nick-hornby-high-fidelity))

"I’ve had a bad week," Bruce says out loud.

There is no sound as feet steps down onto the floor of the Cave. Just a pause in the cold draft that has been brushing across his ankles. Just the sudden heat and weight of hands coming down on his shoulders. Bruce opens his mouth, about to say, _don’t be stupid, you’re just going to break the armour,_ but he realises that the torso has already been taken off and he’s only in his undersuit.

"What happened?" Clark asks. His fingers are warm on the nape of Bruce’s neck, melting the stone-like tension into liquid. "No, wait, don’t tell me. Let me read."

Bruce doesn’t say a word. Merely tilts his head to the side to let Clark come a little closer. Tiny gusts of breath that Superman doesn’t need ghosts over his ear. 

"An Arkham breakout," Clark says, sounding rather impressed. "And this time, the mad ones had help from the staff."

"It’s so difficult to get good help nowadays," Bruce sighs, half-exaggerated. He leans back - half against the back of his chair, half into Clark’s arms - and watches Clark through heavy-lidded eyes. "Sometimes the only ones willing to take the position are already working for either Cobblepot or Sionis."

"And you have to chase _them_ down too, if only to know what they’re planning,” Clark nods. His hands are digging into Bruce’s shoulders now, pressing straight into the knots and loosening them. From a distance away, Bruce hears himself sigh, and he closes his eyes entirely.

"Mm. You have a talent for stating the obvious."

Clark’s laughter rings hollow in his ears. But Bruce is used to it, so he ignores it, tipping his head back. His hands clench around the arms of the chair.

"I’m sorry I didn’t come over to help," Clark says.

"Don’t be stupid," Bruce murmurs. "You know I would’ve chased you right out of Gotham again."

"Yes, yes," Clark laughs that hollow chuckle again. "Gotham is yours and all that. But you know that I’m not going to stop bugging you to let me help, if only once in a while."

"I don’t want you to," Bruce says. He opens his eyes a slit. Clark’s image dances in front of him, half-faded at the edges.

"You help me with Luthor all the time," Clark points out. His mouth is close to Bruce’s jaw, and the kiss he presses onto the skin is scorching heat and sharp teeth.

Bruce drops his hand back to his side. “Only when Luthor’s schemes start involving Gotham,” he says lazily. He doesn’t even have to think about his answer. They have gone through this exact argument too many times. It’s half-rehearsed by now.

Clark makes a soft hum from the bottom of his throat. A thoughtful sound, and Bruce braces himself for the next step of the argument. He opens his mouth when Clark kisses him, tipping his head up to welcome the tongue and lips that invades him, and he lets himself breathe out a long, heavy sigh.

It really has been a bad week.

The draft around his legs has stopped. There is a sound in the Cave, a _thud_ of feet landing on the floor.

"Bruce?"

Superman stands there. He is half-dressed in his uniform, a pair of too-large pants covering his tights and his shirt and ugly tie held in his hands. The curl falls over his forehead, a shadow-contrast to those star-bright eyes that are blinking owlishly. At Batman, who is fully-dressed in his own uniform and armour again.

"I heard you," Superman says, sounding tentative. He pulls the shirt on. His fingers fumble with the tie. Bruce’s nails dig into the cushion of his chair’s arms. "Do you… want to talk about your week?"

Bruce looks at him. Even in the half-light of the Cave, Superman looks starkly bright. The edges of his being are a sharp splash of colour amongst the grey. Bruce turns away.

"No," he says flatly. "Go home, Clark."

Superman looks mullish, full lips pulled into a line. He opens his mouth. Bruce lets himself stare at them, wondering about how the insides will taste.

Then Superman knots up his tie. Puts his glasses on. Runs a hand through his hair until the single curl is joined by others, falling over his face. He sighs heavily, turning away as he takes out a slim gold band from the breast pocket of his shirt, slipping it on his fourth finger.

"I really wish that you’d tell me what you’re thinking of sometimes instead of keeping it all inside," he says, shaking his head.

Before Bruce can say a word, Clark is already gone. He turns back to the computer’s screen. It is black, having gone to sleep long ago, and Bruce’s fingers hover over the keyboard. There are analyses he must run. There are plans he must make.

Instead, he sinks back into the chair. Half-lids his eyes, and smiles at Clark again.

"Where were we?"


	6. cat-fur, fox-fur

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
> Garcilaso de la Vega (from [aseaofquotes](http://www.aseaofquotes.com/post/109176670541/garcilaso-de-la-vega-submitted)) + [Cat-Skin](http://www.authorama.com/grimms-fairy-tales-62.html)  
> 

_The new farmhand has quite a hand with the soup,_ the cooks titter amongst themselves. _The young King has asked for him for two nights in a row_.

Clark keeps his head down and hides a secretive smile from beneath his hair. The soup is an old recipe of the old cook in the castle he had once lived, his favourite, but he knows it is not the rural taste that has so enamoured the King. 

He slips a hand into his pockets and picks out the star he has unstitched from the third cloak his father had made for him. The first was made out of pure sunlight captured within the unfurled petals of morning glories; the second of moonlight captured within a rare, diamond-still lake; and now, the third, the light of a million stars, stolen from fragile, new-woven spider-webs. 

There will be no hidden beauty in the Prince’s soup the next night. Clark has another cloak, but this is a dull thing, made out of the shed fur of cats and foxes and other such creatures with sly, brilliant eyes. It is what had allowed him to steal away from his father’s kingdom, the fur melding him with the forest nights as he ran with soldiers’ hounds at his tail.

This will be his last gamble. Unlike the piece of liquid gold that can be chased for amusement with a spoon, or the moving mercury that slides - like living steel - out of the soup and onto the King’s hand, the star is a dangerous thing. Hot to the touch, it will burn the King’s tongue and leave a mark.

The soup is sent out of the kitchens into the King’s personal rooms. Clark waits, biting his knuckles. The skin tears, blood beading on pale skin so much like his mother’s. His hands are no longer smooth, not after long months of farm work. 

Clark licks up the red and thinks of the scar on the King’s tongue from the star.

When he is called for, he takes the cloak made of cat-fur and fox-fur and wraps it around himself. Invisible, melding into the shadows, he steals into the King’s rooms.

They call him Wolf-King, so brilliant the blue of his eyes and the sharpness of his mind. Clark waits at the half-opened doorway, and he hides a smile beneath heavy furs when the King turns around and looks straight at the shadows that hide him.

"Months ago, I met a man in the woods," the King says. His voice seems plucked from darkness and woven by unseen hands into sound, and Clark is no longer surprised that the man can see him when all the soldiers of his own kingdom had ridden by. 

"He was hidden in the trees as I rode past, hunting a criminal who has escaped Gotham. I thought him a cat, but there was too much fear and grief in those eyes I saw for anything but human. Those very eyes have lingered in my mind for the past months, and I had thought it the only remnant I own of the stranger until I found the sun in my soup."

The King holds out a hand. Clark takes a step forward. His hands remain hidden in the folds of his cloak.

"Sun and Moon and Stars," the King continues. His voice has deepened further, living shadows that wrap themselves around Clark’s chest and caresses him with every word. "The servants tell me your name is Clark Kent, and you come from one of the small villages of Gotham."

"The servants have not lied to you," Clark says, and he is filled with gladness that his voice does not shake. “‘Clark Kent’ was the name given to me by the kind gardener and head cook of the palace I once lived."

"A palace," the King murmurs. "Are you a Prince, then?"

Clark takes a deep breath. He lets the heavy cloak fall from him, and steps out of the shadows. His eyes catches the Wolf-King’s, blue against blue, and he spreads out his callused hands and lets the light of the burning hearth show the dirt and soot and grime of his face.

"No longer," he says. "Merely a farm hand."

The Wolf-King’s hands were said to be cold, his blood rumoured to be sent a-rushing through his veins not by a heart but by a machine fueled by the chill-flames of his will. But now, as the King’s fingers swipe at his cheeks and wipes away dirt to reveal the paleness that has so enamoured his father, Clark finds those words to be lies.

"There is nothing mere about you," the King says, and there is wonder in his voice.

His hands swipe across Clark’s eyes. Soot falls onto the richly carpeted floors, and Clark would protest, but his whole being is caught within the grasp of those blue-lightning eyes.

"Gotham has long been in shadow," the King says, his voice a sweet caress over the curve of Clark’s cheek. "My people call me Wolf, but I am one running in the forests with no stars to guide my path, no moon to howl towards, and no sun to lull me to sleep amongst the leaves.

"Yet now I have found you."

Clark turns his head, caressing the hand cupping his jaw. He inhales, and with his next breath out, lays out his secrets upon the Wolf-King’s feet. 

"Kal of the House of El, the ruling House of Krypton, the kingdom where the sun rises and moon sets; the kingdom where all stars are born."

"Kal," the King says, his tongue caressing the single syllable. "Kal of Krypton, the kingdom of light, two rivers from Gotham. Clark, a farmhand with grieving eyes. Let Gotham’s shadows heal the burns from the bright lights. Come rule by my side, and bring the sky’s smiles to this dark city of mine."

"No," Clark says, and he smiles and presses a hand on the King’s lips when he sees the flash of hurt in those eyes. "I cannot stay by the side of a man who I know only as ‘Wolf-King’, my lord."

When the Wolf-King laughs, the sound is like a forest alive with joy. Night-flowers blooming, owls swooping in freedom, branches stretching outwards with fruits tempting bats towards them. A forest that has sheltered him, and hid him from the burning light of his home.

"Bruce," the King says, giving treasure with casual ease. "Bruce, of the House of Wayne."

Clark breathes in the shape of the name. “Bruce,” he says, and lets the edges print itself on the insides of his mouth.

He falls to his knees. His hand still holds his King’s, and he lifts his eyes and gives him a smile as bright as the full moon revealing herself behind storm clouds.

"I am Clark Kent, a mere farmhand. And I will be by your side, bringing the sun and moon and stars to your land."

 _For I can do naught else:_ _you have stolen my heart from the first moment our eyes met_.

Those words he keeps his throat, for he can already feel the answer, warm as morning sun, in the weight of Bruce’s gaze upon his skin.

The cloak of cat-fur and fox-fur will be kept carefully away, or perhaps used to wrap around the King’s shoulders during his hunts. Clark will never need it again.


	7. comfortable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
> Sarah Winman, _When God Was a Rabbit_ (from [aseaofquotes](http://www.aseaofquotes.com/post/108203170755/sarah-winman-when-god-was-a-rabbit))

This is how he realises:

Clark has always been a part of his life. Even before he knew about Bruce and Batman, there has been Superman, soaring in the skies in primary colours. His parents would pull him close, their laughter gentle in his ears. _Look, Dick,_ his father would say. _He’s flying, really flying_. And his mother would shake her head, smiling, _But he doesn’t look nearly as good as us when we do._

But it’s only after he becomes Robin that he meets Clark. Clark with his heavy glasses and his Midwest _gosh_ and _darn_ that makes Dick shove his hands into his mouth to stifle the giggles. Clark who sometimes comes swooping in to save Batman and Robin, standing in front of thugs with his hands on his hips, blocking them physically from bullets that simply bounce off of him.

Dick has never wondered why Clark always seems to know when they’re in over their heads. Never questions. They’re best friends. Clark has told him so, and he, in his youth, has taken that answer at face value.

Now as he watches Bruce and Clark in the Cave, he wonders. Did Clark hesitate before saying _best friend_? Did his eyes dart towards Bruce for just a moment? Were there moments when Clark’s hearing caught him coming down the Cave, and the two of them jumped apart - a precise four inches of distance - before he sees them?

No, he thinks. It’s not that. It’s nothing so obvious.

He has never caught them kissing. Has never caught even the briefest overt hint that their relationship is anything beyond best friends and brothers.

But it’s there, nonetheless: in the shape of Clark’s mouth as he smiles at Bruce; in the way Bruce’s body turns towards him whenever he comes to the Cave, no matter what he’s working on. It’s there in the way Clark’s hand has shifted from being squarely in the middle of Bruce’s shoulder to the join of his neck. It’s the way Bruce’s panic has worsened whenever he hears or sees about Clark being hurt. It’s the way Bruce’s smiles are more often now, and more genuine, as if the shadows within his heart has been chased away from the sun of Clark’s being.

It’s how they are more in tune with each other now. During the few occasions that Dick has to watch them fight, they move in perfect rhythm, as if following a tune that only they can hear. As if their hearts are beating in tandem. They barely even need to speak to be heard by each other now.

"Dick, you’re quiet," Barbara’s voice in his ear is slightly distorted from the comm device, but her worry comes through clearly. "Something wrong?"

Dick considers the question. He looks down at the Cave once more. Batman is standing in front of the computer, the virtual images dancing around his gloved fingertips. Superman stands next to him, two inches separating their bodies, and, even here, Dick can tell that he’s watching Bruce’s fingers more than what is being shown.

"Nah," he tells Babs, making his voice as sincere as possible because he knows she worries. "I’m just really happy, that’s all."

Barbara snorts. He can practically hear her shaking her head. Of course she knows what he’s talking about without him saying it. “You’re such an unrepentent sap,” she accuses. But there is amusement in her voice, and that’s the last straw - Dick laughs.

"I’m proud of it."

Batman’s head shoots upwards. The gaze behind those white lenses are likely questioning, and Dick can imagine the arched eyebrow beneath the heavy Kevlar cowl.

"Nightwing reporting in," he grins, waving as he leaps over the banister and lands on the balls of his feet like a cat.

"What do you have for me, B?"

Bruce opens his mouth, surely to berate him. But Clark has a hand on his shoulder and, if Dick isn’t mistaken, his thumb is gently stroking over a tendon on Bruce’s neck. And, just like that, Bruce relaxes. Dick fights down a grin when Clark winks at him.

"We have a new lead in the case," Bruce says. The roll of his eyes is verbal. Dick gives up the ghost: his lips curve upwards.

He half-jogs over, standing a distance behind the two of them before spreading out his arms. “Hit me,” he says.

Clark’s hand, Dick notices, doesn't leave Bruce’s shoulder for the entire briefing.


	8. familiarity and contempt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Notes:** [Batman/Superman 18](http://missmithen.tumblr.com/post/109099825978/batman-superman-18-oh-well-okay-then). Otherwise known as “Goddammit DC, you made me read a New 52 book.” (It’s the only one I’ve read. So forgive me for any inconsistencies.) Dedicated to [Crotalus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Crotalus/pseuds/Crotalus), who asked for it despite knowing that I don’t read New 52.

Clark’s arms around him lingers like sun-warmth after stepping into the shade. Exactly fifteen minutes ago, Bruce has told him to drop him at the Watchtower, drop Lois back at the Planet, and head immediately towards SHADE with the Kandorian they have found. But seconds are ticking past, and Clark is still here. 

Kara, at least, is obedient. She has left for Metropolis immediately with Lois in her arms. Given her speed, she should be halfway towards SHADE by now. But Clark is still here, standing there, his bright blue uniform almost glowing with its own radiance under the fluorescence of the Watchtower medical bay. Clark is still here, simply staring at him without a word.

Bruce closes his eyes, focusing on the taste of blood in his mouth. Tries to ignore the burning weight of Clark’s gaze. Tries to ignore the thrill of his nerves from his touch.

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” he says.

“We’re not going to SHADE until I’m sure that you’re healed,” Clark replies immediately. How long has he been rehearsing that answer? Or is it just Bruce who is becoming predictable? 

“Clark,” Bruce tries to say. But it’s lost, because he has to cough. It’s only a small laceration of the lungs – lucky, because it could’ve been much worse, and the fractured rib could’ve punctured straight into his heart – but there’s still blood in his lungs nonetheless.

“Don’t tell me to go, dammit,” Clark growls, and he’s stepping closer. His eyes are narrowed, slashes of storm-skies on a pale face. He stops right at the edge of the stasis bed, his hands clenching so tight that Bruce can see the outlines of his bones. He wonders, inane for a moment, if Superman ever gets cuts on his palms from his own fingernails.

“Bruce,” Clark says. His hand lifts, hovering in the air right before the stasis bed’s shield before it drops back down to his side again.

His chest itches as his bones and organs heal. Bruce reaches up to scratch it, and takes that moment for his eyes to dart to the side.

“Diana.”

She’s not there, but Clark’s reaction is telling: he turns around, eyes wide, stumbling blindly and almost knocking the stasis bed over. When he sees that there are only two of them in the room, he turns back to Bruce, his lips press into a tight, thin line. 

“You don’t play fair,” he says.

“I’m playing fair,” Bruce points out, lips curving up into a wry, ironic smirk. “I’m being fair.”

The Joker-wannabe’s words hang between them. _The one you confide in the most. The one you understand the best. The one you’ll miss more than any other when he dies…_

A madman’s rambling, easy enough to dismiss. 

Except: the tightness of Clark’s grip around him; the panic in his eyes in that moment before he managed to catch Bruce; the stuttering of his breath and the shaking of his hands as he searched for the bullet. Except: the way he looks now, eyes bright and dark at the same time; the stiffness of his shoulders and the way his feet are still turned to Bruce’s direction; the way his breathing refuses to calm down.

Clark is a master at masking his body language. It’s the only reason why his identity as Clark Kent has never been found out. But never with his guard down. Never around Bruce.

It’s nearly enough to make Bruce want to reach out to him. To drag him closer, injuries and stasis bed rules be damned, and breathe in those shuddering exhales.

How many times has he stopped himself from putting into words, _To hell with the world, as long as Clark is safe_? Even in his own head?

“What’s the old saying?” he speaks just to break the silence; the rare form of mercy he shows only Clark. “Familiarity breeds contempt.”

Too close, and everything will come crashing down. Bruce knows this. Clark does too. He has always wondered why Clark has chosen Diana, but he thinks that perhaps it’s because she is from a culture so different from the one he grew up in; she will never be bored of him, and he of her. 

And she won’t die from a bullet to the chest. She won’t _age_.

Clark finally turns to face him. His breathing steadies. He shakes his head. “You’re a bastard, Bruce,” he says. 

_Only I can make you swear like that_ , Bruce thinks, helplessly vicious. He keeps his own breathing steady, suddenly glad that he hasn’t bothered to take off the cowl.

The stasis bed beeps. A mechanical voice informs him that the treatment is complete. He knows that already – his chest no longer hurts with every inhale – but it’s a signal, nonetheless. 

Jumping off the bed, he turns it off. 

“We should head to SHADE. Flush out this killer you missed a funeral for.”

“Yeah,” Clark says. The weight of his gaze shifts, lightens again. 

“Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... I actually managed to keep up this daily updates thing for more than a week. 
> 
> In the words of Keanu Reeves: _woah_.


	9. breaking the bones of your heart like twigs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
> _Visible World,_ Richard Siken

When going into Bruce’s bedroom, Clark always uses the door.

The suite has floor-length windows that can’t be opened, true, but that won’t stop Superman when there is a balcony door on a flimsy lock. It’s a conscious choice that Clark makes; the same choice that has him watching and memorising the way Alfred walks and then using the same silent-gliding steps to slip into Bruce’s bedroom and watch him sleep.

Outside, the dawn comes. Batman has finished the night’s patrol barely an hour ago. It has been a good night – there are some new bruises, but no new wounds. The bandages over the older ones, the still-healing ones, have been changed, but they are still white. Underneath Bruce’s skin, his blood runs in his veins, rich purple and blue-green. A little too thin to be healthy – he received a stab wound three nights before, and his body, though strong, hasn’t managed to manufacture enough haemoglobin as replacement – but nothing to really worry about.

Clark takes another silent step forward. Bruce breathes steadily, completely asleep and relaxed in a way that Clark rarely sees him. His chest rises and falls, and Clark’s eyes move downwards, watching the oxygen molecules as they seep through the tiny villi of Bruce’s lungs and is captured by his blood.

His heart beats slowly. A miracle of expansion and contraction, a tiny organ the size of Clark’s clenched fist that keeps Bruce living, keeps that brilliant mind buzzing like bottled lightning and that well-trained body gliding like a jungle cat whenever he’s awake. Clark counts every beat with a small tap of his fingers against his thigh – silent enough to escape Bruce’s hearing, but a gentle, matching _thump, thump,_ in counterpoint to Bruce’s heart. 

Sometimes Clark wonders if he’ll still be alive if someone rips his heart out. Or, more likely, collapse his ribs until the bones fracture and pierce the muscle. He thinks he will, and that thought is nearly enough to send a cloud across the sun.

He focuses on Bruce’s heart again instead. Such a small thing, and yet, metaphorically, it’s the room of all of his emotions. The passion with which he loves and protects Gotham and all those around him are held in that muscle. All that drives Bruce is there, and Clark finds his hand reaching out, fingers curling inwards as if he wants to touch.

He shudders.

“What happened?”

Bruce’s voice sounds slurred, his usual crispness dulled by sleep. Clark starts a little – he has been so focused on Bruce’s heartbeat that he missed the minute change in his breathing. 

“Nothing,” he says.

“Don’t take me to be an idiot,” Bruce says. His eyes blink open, shadow-lashes fluttering above pale cheeks, chiaroscuro throwing the blue of his irises into sharp relief. Not for the first time, Clark finds a fist punching all air out of his lungs at how beautiful Bruce is.

“You smell of fire and blood, Clark,” he continues, annoyance seeping into his tone. “What _happened_?”

Clark closes his eyes. He lets out a breath.

“There was a fire,” he hears himself say dully. “A gas pipe burst. The whole house went up in flames. A little girl died. I heard her struggling to breathe. I heard her heart stop.”

The first rule of journalism: stick to the facts. He holds that tightly to himself now, trying to not squeeze his eyes shut. _Stick to the facts,_ he repeats to himself, over and over. But his x-ray vision is still turned on, and he is seeing through his own skin and past Bruce’s, fixating upon the _thump, thump, thump_ of his heart. The proof of life.

There’s the sound of rustling, sheets being drawn back. Clark’s eyes fly open, and he sees –for the briefest moments – the veins and nerves and bones of Bruce’s face. He shakes himself hard, switching back to normal vision to see Bruce scowling impatiently at him. He has moved over on the bed, leaving a space there, just big enough for Clark.

“Come here,” Bruce says. “Skip work. Tell Perry you’re chasing a lead or something. You’re going to be useless at the Planet like this anyway.”

The first rule of talking to Bruce: his words are but a tiny fraction of what he means. Clark sees the way his hands are half-clenched on top of the sheets; sees the worry in the lines around his eyes even as the blue shows only annoyance and tiredness.

His feet are walking forward even before he knows it. He sits down on the bed, shifts to slip between the sheets- and stops mid-motion, because his boots are still on. Bright red, clashing against the white sheets.

He stares at them and thinks of blood.

Pale hands reach out towards him. They take his hands, lifting them and placing them on top of his boots. Clark starts again, forcing himself to breathe, to inhale even though his nose and mouth still smells like smoke and death, and he pulls the boots off.

“I’m getting ash on the sheets,” he hears himself say. His voice sounds dull.

“Alfred has dealt with worse,” Bruce says brusquely. “And if you feel really bad about it, you can take them to the dry cleaner’s later in the afternoon.”

Clark feels a tug on his cape. He lets himself fall down, instinctively curling to his side. Bruce is lying next to him. Those lashes look like soot, like lash, and Clark leans forward and presses trembling kisses on them.

“Close your eyes,” Bruce murmurs, his voice so low that only Clark can hear. “Listen to my voice. My lungs. My heart.”

His fingers are calluses-rough on Clark’s cheeks. They sink into his hair, stroking over the strands, slow and gentle. Clark obeys.

Bruce falls back asleep in only a few seconds – patrol usually wears him out, and Clark knows he has a meeting at noon, and that’s less than six hours away. But his hand is still in Clark’s hair, warm and sweet. Clark exhales, wrapping a cautious arm around Bruce’s shoulders. When Bruce doesn’t pull away, when his breathing hitches before smoothing out again, Clark buries his face into Bruce’s hair.

He doesn’t smell of anything. Batman showers with hunter soap, because there’s always a chance – however small – of someone recognising him by scent. But the emptiness is itself a comfort, and Clark feels his body finally relaxing, tension slipping out of him. Sleep beckons, a grey shade at the edge of his vision.

There’s an insistent voice in his head telling him that he shouldn’t be sleeping; that he should get up and go back out and stop deaths like that little girl’s from happening again. But he stays there; stays because Bruce is curled against his chest. Stays because he remembers that, sometimes, he needs to take a few hours off saving the world to let himself be saved.

Slowly, he falls asleep. In the in-between half-space, he feels Bruce’s lips brushing over his brow, and an arm wrapping around his chest.

He smiles.

It’s always Bruce who saves him in the end.


	10. a raw, ugly thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  

Heavy weight of eyes upon him. Tim’s fingers twitch where they were held around the champagne flute. He doesn’t even bother turning, knowing that Bruce is glaring at him from across the room, having some kind of sixth sense that tells him whenever Tim – or anyone of the boys – is trying to sneak alcohol during one of the Wayne parties when they’re still under-aged.

He sighs to himself, placing the glass back onto a passing waiter’s tray. He catches Dick’s eyes from where he’s talking to Barbara, and smiles crookedly in reply to the sympathetic glance.

Scheme having failed spectacularly, he goes back to what he has been doing before boredom caught up with him: watching Bruce.

Bruce is in full Bruce Wayne mode tonight, smiling emptily and brushing past the members of Gotham’s elite, shaking hands and making small talk. Only someone who knows him truly well will notice the tension in his shoulders and slight tic at his jaw that shows that he’s simply pretending at some form of enjoyment.

His gaze slides across the room, and he wonders if Clark notices.

Clark isn’t here tonight in his reporter guise. No, he’s in full Superman regalia, blue and red Kryptonian cloth practically glowing underneath the chandelier of Wayne Manor’s ballroom. Right now, his head is tilted to the side, attention entirely focused on a woman who is whispering into his ear. Just politeness, maybe, but many of those here bought tickets at exorbitant prices just to have a chance to speak to Superman.

If it is anyone but Clark, Tim will call this a pretence, or even a game. But it’s Clark, and the interest in his eyes is purely genuine.

There is a flash of movement out of the corner of his eyes. Tim turns, his body an unerring compass towards Bruce, watching as he stumbles towards Superman. Bruce slides a hand over those broad shoulders, and the smile he gives the woman is a little too drunk for propriety, and a little too wide, showing a mouth full of white teeth.

( _Two thirds of them are implants,_ Tim notes.)

The woman steps away, her own smile faltering. And the whispers are starting, sibilant sounds that carry far further than their owners ever realise:  
 _  
Wayne’s drank too much again._

_God, he’s a disgrace._

_Is this the reason why his boys don’t drink? Christ, if I have him as a father, I won’t either._

_Makes one wonder how much he has to bribe the authorities to let him keep those boys, huh?_

Only a quarter of Tim’s attention is paid to those whispers. Most of him are fixed upon Bruce, in those thin lips now leaning into Superman’s ear. Bruce knows about sibilance, of course, so Tim can’t hear what he says. But he can still see.

 _Still no sign of any of Luthor’s newest backers,_ Bruce is saying, his hand sliding down Clark’s chest, white gloves stark against the colourful House of El shield. _Twenty-seven percent chance that none of them are in Gotham. Fifty-three percent that they are not using legitimate money to fund his latest schemes._

“Mister Wayne,” Superman’s sonorous voice rings out in the ballroom. “I don’t think that’s entirely appropriate.”

Bruce laughs, waving his wine glass around. Red droplets fall onto the marble floors. “Come on now, Superman,” he says, leaning in even further. His hips are tilted a precise thirty-two degrees towards Superman, an exact inch away from him. “Don’t tell me that after all these years on Earth, no one has offered?”

“I’m not interesting in such things,” Superman says firmly. His hand brushes against Bruce’s shoulder, wrist tilted forward. It’s a familiar motion, and Tim wonders if Clark ever realises that this is the perfect position for Bruce to feel the beat of his pulse against his collarbone.

“There must have been plenty,” Bruce says. His head dips down, looking up at Superman through heavy lashes. “But are there any of them as handsome as I am?”

Another movement at the corner of his eyes – swift, purposeful. Tim flicks his gaze sideways, and catches sight of one of their guests – a Mister Dawson from New York, who flew all the way here to meet Superman – slipping out through the ballroom doors. There it is then, one of their elusive prey. Tim makes a move to follow him, but he’s interrupted:

“I think you’re drunk, Mister Wayne,” Superman says, and there is disapproval bright in his eyes. His hand holds onto Bruce’s elbow, ostensibly holding him up even though Bruce’s feet are placed three-and-a-half inches apart, the perfect posture for balance and attack. “Let me get you upstairs.”

Bruce throws his head backwards. Through the dark fall of his hair, Tim catches sight of his eyes, the minute shake of his head. 

He stills.

“Superman is offering to bring me to my room?” Bruce says, his laughter hollow, and dull like a burnt-out lightbulb. “How can I refuse that?”

Tim turns away. He has seen this dance too many times to not know the ending steps like the back of his hand. Superman and Bruce Wayne will disappear through the doors, and Bruce will transform into the Bat down a deserted hallway, Clark helping him dress with his functional movements that are somehow skittering-quick when touching skin. Then Batman and Superman would chase down whichever criminal that had caught their attention, their movements in perfect tandem.

He knows what is going to happen far too well.

Once, he had asked Bruce why: why it is that Superman – or Clark Kent – are invited frequently for Wayne parties; why it is _always_ Superman who serves as Batman’s partner when it comes to altercations around Wayne Manor; why Bruce chooses to give Clark information by leaning in and flirting with him.

Why the two of them do the best to torture themselves with what they can’t have, though he never let that particular phrasing out of his mouth.

 _Convenience_ , Bruce replied. _And I’d rather not have Metropolis’s thugs running around my city._

His hands were still on the Computer’s keyboards, his eyes fixed upon the screen. Tim has no superhearing, but he is a detective, and Bruce’s breathing was steady.

In his pocket, his phone vibrates. Tim plucks it out and presses the button, holding it to his ear without needing to check the caller ID.

“Are you done with the boring party already?” Kon’s voice pours into his ear, sounding annoyed and impatient. “Come on, let’s hang out.”

“No,” Tim says. His eyes are fixed upon the doors of the ballroom where Superman had just manhandled Bruce Wayne through. “I’m staying here.”

“For what?” Kon yelps, sounding insulted. As if he can’t imagine there being anything more important that Tim would rather do than hang out with him.

Tim hides a smile. It’s too sharp at the edges for the boy he’s supposed to be. “There are valuable lessons I need to learn. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He hangs out with Kon’s protests still tumbling out of the phone’s earpiece.

That’s not a lie. He’s here to learn how to move like someone who is born to the upper echelons of society; here to learn how to wear a mask of wealth and utter harmlessness; here to learn the weight and edge of the Gotham elites’ threads around his fingers, and just how to twitch to move them; here to learn the precise distance to keep himself from the world.

But the most important lesson he has learned through all this, the one that he realised in the Cave that night, is this:

How to lie to himself so well that not even someone with enhanced senses will ever find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear whoever-is-reading, please send more prompts. I'm running out.


	11. crossing the half-space between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from [beizanten](http://archiveofourown.org/users/beizanten/pseuds/beizanten): Bruce refuses to have any kind of intimacy – including sex – with Clark as Batman, who he sees to be his true self.

Remnants of Luthor’s latest scheme lie around them: corpses of mechanical spiders, their insides broken; cameras once strategically placed around the abandoned warehouse, now half-melted and half-sliced like some exotic dish for creatures who dine upon metal and silicon; green dust on the ground, radiation seeping into Clark’s blood.

But the sweat on his skin doesn’t just come from Kryptonite-sickness. It’s from the battle itself, fighting to take down the robots, to shut down the cameras. Now there’s only one thing left, which is to capture Luthor, and that, Clark thinks, can wait.

Batman is kneeling on the ground, his gloved hands swiping through green dust. Collecting, as always. Clark rolls his eyes, taking a deep breath before exhaling, creating a miniature tornado that sweeps up Kryptonite along with actual dust and debris, whirling all of it into a small hill in the centre of the warehouse.

He can feel Bruce’s glare even through the cowl. But Clark’s blood is burning too hot, too fast, and he only grins in reply.

“You can pick that up later,” he says, and _moves_.

His hand has barely closed around Bruce’s wrist, pulling him close, when Bruce’s hand is on his chest. Right above his heart, the pointed tips of his gauntlet digging into the shield on Clark’s chest, scraping over invulnerable cloth and skin.

“Not now,” the Bat growls, his body stiffening even further, turning to stone stronger than the armour. _Not like this_ , Clark hears, because this is not the first time.

The last few times when he touched Batman like this, he was pushed away. The last few times, he had obeyed, stepping backwards with his hands held up in surrender.

But his blood is coursing fast through his veins. But the sight of Bruce’s mouth – full flesh beneath leather and Kevlar, erotically pink beneath oil-slick black – is making him remember. But there are images in his head: his hands tearing off Bruce Wayne’s tailored suit, pushing him against the wall and fucking him until all that tumbles out from beneath his lips are moans and mangled gasps of Clark’s name. 

Clark stays still. He smiles, knives at the edges, and says, “Your mouth looks the same.”

He grabs hold of Bruce’s cape, right at where it joins to the cowl, and pulls him close, crushes their mouths together before those cheating hands can think to hit him, or even slip down to his utility belt. It’s dangerous, he knows – he’s weaker here, more vulnerable, because of the Kryptonite.

But he has been thinking about this for a while, and this is the only time when he knows that he will not be retaliated against too harshly; not now when his uniform is still soaked with Kryptonite-sweat, and Bruce can taste his pain on his tongue. Clark presses his advantage, hand clenching tighter on the cape as he bends Bruce over with a fist at the small of his back.

When dealing with Batman, learn to fight – and think – like Batman.

They are both panting when he pulls back, and Clark doesn’t bother stifling the wicked smirk when he notices how red and swollen Bruce’s lips are now. So filthy in contrast to Batman’s cowl.

“Your mouth tastes the same, B.” His lips wrap around the single letter, caressing it before breathing out against the armour of Bruce’s neck, right above his beating pulse. Bruce’s control is half-perfect, his breathing even but heartbeat staccato, and Clark laughs to himself as he buries his face into that curve.

When he bites at the leather and Kevlar, tasting shadows themselves, he hears a strangled groan. Bruce’s throat trembles beneath him, fingers digging into his hair, and Clark arches his back and brings Bruce with him, his fist sliding up to dig his thumb into the armour covering Bruce’s spine.

“Fucking _bastard_ ,” Bruce growls. He wrenches himself from Clark’s grasp, reinforced leather slapping over the back of his hand. Behind those white lenses, his blue eyes are narrowed, burning with heat and want and a thousand things he will never put into words; that he will never say aloud.

Clark laughs, because Bruce never has to. Long years has him learning the language of the Bat, half-formed thing held close to the chest that it is: Bruce understands his curiosity, and he’s counting on it. Every single emotion shown and revealed by his x-ray vision is completely deliberate.

“Only as much as you,” he murmurs.

Bruce smiles, wide and pleased. Teeth and lips and cowl and Clark is thinking of the old rhyme: _white as snow, red as blood, black as a raven’s wing_. He opens his mouth as Bruce brushes his still-gloved fingertips over his lips, bites down and tastes leather well-worn with sweat and dust.

“A minute half,” he says, the tips of his fingers now pressing against Clark’s palate, deep into his mouth to choke if Clark needs to breathe. “That’s all you’re getting.”

Clark throws his arm out, wrapping his cape around Batman’s form. Buries his face into his neck and laughs again before he takes off to Gotham, the wind cold as he breaks the sound barrier.

They reach the Cave with three seconds to spare, and Clark grins as he lands on the ground, pulling his cape away from Bruce with enough force to press his best friend against the car.

“Less than a minute half,” he grins.

Bruce sinks his hands into Clark’s hair, tilting his head forward. The heat of his breath twists inside Clark’s lungs, and his teeth sinks into his jaw. A hand presses over Clark’s throat, reinforced Kevlar strengthening the grip as Bruce squeezes.

“What are you waiting for, Clark?” Bruce murmurs. “An engraved invitation?”

“No,” Clark says, and he digs his fingers into Batman’s armour, trailing downwards to part all several million dollars’ worth of it like paper. 

“Just you.”


	12. alike in dignity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
> Inspired also by a roleplay with [Crotalus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Crotalus/pseuds/Crotalus), with some ideas blatantly stolen from the [House of Earth series](http://jij.livejournal.com/252070.html) by [mithen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mithen).

The trip from Kazakhstan, taken half above the clouds and half on the land, is not nearly long enough to cause the full beard that is now outlining his jaw and his neck. But the hairs had sprouted on the trip towards that particular country, when all Bruce had hoped to find for his supposedly hopeless war against the Kryptonians was a green rock.

He has found something else instead.

His fingers draw the line from the base of his ear down to his throat, right above the steadily-thrumming pulse. How many minutes does he have left until he can see feel this familiar beat? There is a clock ticking at the back of his mind, and Bruce finds his breath shortening. He looks away from his own reflection.

The shaving set on the ornate sink is old-fashioned: a wooden bowl, a thick brush, and a straight razor with a blade that glints underneath the bright fluorescent bulb of the bathroom. Bruce picks up the powder, running the tap and letting the paste form before he starts to whisk. The motions are familiar, constant, and he has never needed concentration to do it.

So he leaves the bathroom, entering the lavish bedroom that is as large as three human-dwellings. Across from him, there is a window that spreads itself out like wings from opposite walls, and Bruce steps close to it. White foam splatters on glass.

This city used to be known as Metropolis. Touted as the ‘City of Tomorrow’, it had been a bright, glittering jewel in the State of Delaware’s crown when there was still a state. If Bruce squints and tilts his head, he can still see the darkness of Gotham past the soaring crystal buildings that now occupies the land where Metropolis once stood. And Gotham, once clad in stone and frowning gargoyles, is pierced with crystals too – dark things, solidified shadows, gleaming like petroleum in the noon-sunlight.

“The House of El is a beautiful place.”

In Kazakhstan, Bruce had hoped to find a stone; a crude, dead weapon glowing green with radiation that Kryptonians are weak towards. He never found it. Instead, he finds this: a man, tall and pale-skinned, with dark hair like the brush of bats’ wings across his sapphire-flames eyes. A man who makes no sound as he moves, for his feet do not touch the ground.

Bruce does not move away. He simply lets go of the shaving bowl, tilting his head backwards and exposing his throat. Kal-El smiles, sharp-sweet like spiced honey, and he raises the brush to Bruce’s face, caressing him with heat that bypasses even brush and foam.

“’Tis only a pity that Zod has taken so much interest in the land across the river,” Kal-El continues, shaking his head. “The sight of the brilliant El is always ruined by Zod’s shadows, no matter how high one is in the clouds.”

Face covered in foam, the glint of the shaving razor in Kal-El’s hand sends Bruce's blood rushing through his veins, and the world _tilts_ , if for the moment.

“Without darkness, there is no light,” he murmurs, careful to keep his words soft so as not to slash his own throat with the blade. “And light must beware, for the darkness will always come.”

Kal-El laughs, a low, rumbling sound in his throat. The blade scrapes across Bruce’s jaw, infinitely careful on his so breakable human skin.

“Surely you do not think so highly of Zod,” he says.

 _No_ , Bruce thinks. The darkness is not Zod, for Zod has appeared like the rest of them – high in the skies, with red heat-light flashing from his eyes. Despite his dark crystals, despite his castle of shadows, Zod is still a creature of light. 

The darkness belongs to the creatures whose feet touch the ground, for Gotham’s cries reach Bruce even across the bay, her voice haunting like a siren’s as she calls for her trueborn sons and daughters home to topple the tyrant that now floats above her dark ground

One last stroke of the razor, and Bruce’s face is clean. His eyes meet Kal-El’s, and the Kryptonian smiles – crooked now – before he disappears and appears again, this time holding a washcloth. It rasps across Bruce’s cheeks, the water warm on his skin, and he lets out a breath.

It half-shudders in his throat as Kal-El’s hand rests there, thumb pressing against the hollow. Just the tiniest loss of control and he will break Bruce’s windpipe, but there is no sign of exertion on his face as his silk-smooth thumb strokes upwards, finally stopping at Bruce’s mouth.

“Your neck is finally ready,” Kal-El says. “ _You_ are finally ready.”

 _Not yet,_ Bruce whispers to Gotham, reaching out for his city beyond the waters and skies that separate them. _Not yet_ , he holds onto the words, meeting Kal-El’s eyes as the Kryptonian sets down shaving brush and razor blade. _Not yet_ , he repeats, watching Kal-El’s hands as he draws out pure light from his robes.

A collar grown out of pure Kryptonian crystal, with words carved in the front in Kryptonian script with heat vision. Words Bruce can recognise even without his knowledge of the language.

“Property of Kal, of the House of El,” he murmurs, falling to his knees. His eyes remain on the Kryptonian, defiance-bright. “Heir of the Science Guild.”

Kal-El smiles at him, sweet as a child, benevolent as a god. He forces the crystal open with sheer force before placing it on Bruce’s neck. A burst of heat at his nape, the smell of burning hair, and the weight of the collar settles deep into Bruce’s skin, curling into his nerves.

He smiles.

“Mine,” Kal-El whispers, his hand stroking Bruce’s head, trailing down to his new-shaven jaw. “My Matches Malone.”

The rock that is rumoured to be the downfall of Kryptonians is coloured green and glows with death. It would have been a great weapon.

But Bruce has found a living one; one with soft skin and bright eyes, and enough power and influence for him to use to bring Gotham back to the hands of those who truly love her.

“Yes,” he murmurs. “Yours.”

 _Mine_.


	13. the wolf-king and his mortal man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
> _[Tam Lin](http://tam-lin.org/versions/39A.html)_ , by Charles Vess

The winter wind chills and bites, drawing heavy dark clouds across the night sky. The forest, once glowing with life underneath the bright full moon, becomes dull, colours fading away until all that remains ahead of him is grey.

Clark draws his cloak closer to him, leaning against the tree. He waits, heart-in-mouth, for the first will-o-wisps to come.

Once, this city was named Gotham, the castle-town of a proud Kingdom ruled by a Wolf-King who presided over the lands with a fair hand. But he was proud, the old women said, and he loved his lands with too wild a heart, and that is his downfall. For the Faerie Queen, drawn to him by the rumours of his having captured the stars themselves in his eyes, came to him and offered to rule by his side, and he turned her away for his heart already had a mistress, and Gotham does not share well.

Hell hath no fury like a Faerie Queen scorned, the women cackled when Clark urged for more. The Queen does not take rejection well: fire burst in her dark eyes and her olive skin glowed in the moonlight, and with a wave of a hand, the Kingdom was gone, and Gotham was buried under dark trees, and her Wolf-King enslaved to a Queen with a darker power than the city who stole him away and made him into a demon.

This is how the forest Carterhaugh came into being, the old women intoned, their hands cold as warnings upon Clark’s skin.

_So stranger, you must not pass through the forest. For the Wolf-Demon lurks there. Once beautiful, he is now terrible to behold. He hates all beauty, and you are a beautiful man. He will ask for something you hold dear for safe passage, and you carry nothing with you_.

Clark knows more of the story than the old women ever will, for he had ventured into the forest despite their warnings. He had met the Wolf-Demon, and given away the thing he held most dear: his very heart.

Now he waits in the darkness of Carterhaugh, breath trembling not from cold but anxiety. For within his half-frozen hands he holds the Wolf-Demon’s heart, fragile glass with its insides emptied, and there is naught he will not do in order to fill it up with warmth again.

_Faith is all I ask, and faith is all you have,_ the Wolf-Demon had told Clark, his star-blue eyes dark with sorrow. _Come to the forest in the night. Wait for the horses. When I fall from mine, you must catch me, and hold onto me. You must not let me go, my mortal man, for if you do, I will be forever lost_.

The thunder of hoofs rips like lightning through the silence of the forest, and Clark jerks, lifting his head up. His breath stutters in his throat, for in front of him is a sight he has never thought possible: a herd of horses, half-real, their manes fading into the forest’s shadows and their feet shimmering like moving galaxies. He tears his eyes away from them, searching for the rider.

And his wolf comes, riding a grey horse, clad in shadows horned like a demons. His eyes glow, brightening when he sees Clark, and Clark takes a breath, standing up and throwing his arms outwards.

His cloak falls onto the ground. The cold is forgotten.

For the Wolf-Demon has turned to fire itself in his arms, flames licking across his arms, his chest. It’s a heat unlike any Clark has ever known, and his skin burns and bubbles as pain bursts deep within him. But he thinks of the fragile heart he holds, thinks of the heart within the Wolf-Demon’s hands, and he holds on tight.

The fire fades, and within the bracket of his arms is slime and scales, a snake hissing with its fangs extended. Clark gasps, stumbling backwards. He feels every tremor and shudders; he knows that the Wolf-Demon is holding back from filling his body with poison. He knows of the fragile heart he holds, knows of the heart now held between those fangs, and he holds on tight.

The snake vanishes, and it is now a wolf in his arms, eyes yellow and malevolent. Clark falls to the ground, breath knocked out of him, his head dizzied. There are fangs at his throat, but they do not bite down; there are claws on his chest, but they do not sink in. The wolf's fur is silver, and Clark finds the fragile heart he holds beautiful; finds the way his own heart fills up those yellow eyes and turn them to blue to be beautiful, and he holds on tight.

The lion vanishes, and Clark gasps when he finds water. _No_ , he thinks wildly. _No_. But there is the scent of a running brook in his nose, and his hair is wet and he is shivering from the cold sneaking into his veins from the liquid covering every inch of his skin. His arms draw around himself, hands clenching on his own clothes. He realises he needs that fragile heart like he needs water to live; he needs to see how his own heart fills those star-bright eyes more than he needs air, and he helplessly holds on tight.

He is dry again, and in his arms is a man.

A horse stops in front of them, its coat woven out of the night sky and glittering. The Faerie Queen sits upon its back, and her face is beautiful and her eyes are dark, gleaming like rubies.

_For decades I have kept him by side, and yet he has hide his heart from me,_ she says, her voice echoing like wind over leaves. _I would have given him all he wanted. I would have made his Kingdom great. And yet he refused me._

Fingers clench tight on Clark’s chest, and his hands hold on even tighter to the wolf in his arms. If there is but death for them, they will not be parted. 

_He is my beloved, but I am not his,_ the Queen continues, and rubies darken to blood, and she looks infinitely sorrowing. _Go. Take him. The curse is broken_.

She rides away, a stream of stars on her horse’s tail. But Clark barely sees her, for his gaze is caught entirely by the stars within those eyes, blue like the ocean itself, and the Wolf-Demon’s smile is crooked. He pulls away from Clark, standing, and he holds out a hand to him.

They stand next to each other, fingers tangled like their hearts, and watch as the forest of Carterhaugh fade away to be replaced by the Kingdom of Gotham. The Wolf-King’s city is dark with shadows, built of old stones, and she is beautiful.

_My mortal man,_ the demon’s kiss is sweet on Clark’s tongue, his words soft caresses in his ear. _Come rule by my side_.

Clark laughs. _I am not one for ruling my lord,_ he breathes, _but if ‘tis a court you wish for me to go, I will go._

_For I have held you through fire and beasts and flood, and I will never let you go_.


	14. a layer of glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing specific inspired this except for Batman himself. _Content warning for talk about mental illnesses._

The fields of the Kent farm is covered in rich gold; it will be wheat-harvesting season soon. Bruce places his hands on the fence, looking outwards. Clark’s hair shimmer like liquid obsidian in the distance, smiling towards his father as the two of them walk towards him; towards the house. There is the smell of apple pies baking in the air, and the slight tang of blackberries from the basket in Clark’s hands.

“Sometimes I hear voices,” Bruce whispers into the wind. “Sometimes I see things that I know are not really there.”

The air shifts, wheat bowing as if in welcome as Clark and his father enters the field. The high sheaves brush over their hair: gold against black and grey.

“Even though it’s not real, sometimes I find myself afraid.”

He looks down at his hands. The knuckles are too prominent, and the scars decorating the skin shine even through the translucency.

“I can only talk to you about this when you’re far away. When I know you can’t hear.”

Clark is laughing now at something his father is saying. His mother comes out from the house, his voice calling, bright and sharp. Clark looks up to her, smiling as he shifts the basket of blackberries to his shoulder so he can wave.

Martha comes up next to him, leaning against the fence. Her shoulders are loose, and she looks happy and content, spreading out her hands towards the men in her lives.

“We’ve seen more of the world – the universe – together than anyone else has. I’ve seen more of you than anyone else can ever claim. I know you think that you’ve seen more of me than anyone else too, but that’s a lie, Clark. I’ve always hidden this from you.”

Jonathan is coming close. Bruce takes a step sideways, avoiding being run into. Jonathan doesn’t even notice, his entire attention caught on Martha as he says something and all three of them laugh. Martha reaches out and clasps Clark by the arm, pulling him into the house.

Bruce watches them go.

“Don’t get me wrong: I don’t tell you this because I don’t think you would understand. I think you would try your best to, but I don’t know how to deal with that.”

At the door of the farmhouse, Clark stops. He turns around, blue eyes sweeping across the fields, his ears cocked slightly. After a moment, he shrugs to himself, his gaze passing right over Bruce as he goes back in.

“This isn’t something you can solve by fighting or writing or even talking. And, Clark, you’ve always been so bad at dealing with things you can’t fix.”

The wheat moves in the same direction as the wind. The sound of Clark’s voice melts into his parents’ into something hollow and indistinct, words falling to pieces even before they can reach his ears. 

“You’ll protest that you’ll never want to fix me. But that’ll be a lie. Not to me, no, but to yourself. Because when have you ever been able to leave anything alone?”

There’s a subtle beeping in his ear. Bruce sighs, looking down at himself. His body is shivering, turning translucent then back to solidity. 

“Time’s up.”

He draws his hand over his eyes, the barest brush. And just like that, Smallville disappears entirely, replaced by darkness. Bruce bites back a sigh. His elbows ache from where he has been resting them against the computer console. He ignores it, pulling at his eyes.

The contraption is made up of plastic and glass and silicon, fitted to his face and wrapping around the back of his head to cover his ears. The simulations it is capable of have been improving, and Bruce sets it down. His fingers tap on the keyboards, slow and sluggish, as he updates the machine’s capabilities in his files.

A flash of red and blue at the corner of his eyes, but Bruce doesn’t turn. But he does let out the sigh, his hands stopping, resting right above the keyboards.

“Leave,” he says without sound. “I’ve spent too much time with you today already.”

He closes his eyes. Waits.

When he turns around, the Cave is empty.

(It’s not a lie that he always knows the difference between what is really there and what is only in his head.

The real Clark has never behaved the way Bruce wants him to.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I’m pretty sure this one needs more explanation than usual. Basically, my headcanon of Bruce Wayne has always been that he has [paranoid schizophrenia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_schizophrenia). This is because I’ve had personal experience with the illness, both with how the symptoms manifest and how they affect the person with the illness. And a lot of the ways that Bruce behaves essentially fits the bill.


	15. water and glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Half-inspired by a prompt from [beizaten](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/23283395) regarding Clark being possessive over Bruce due to Catwoman. Warnings, though: this is absolute utter filth, with heavy threads of intense control issues and sexual play using Superman’s powers running through it. **NSFW.**
> 
> (It’s Valentine’s Day here right now as I’m posting this, and I’m laughing at how inappropriate that is.)

The glass of the Watchtower is heavy and thick, able to withstand even Superman smashing against it at full impact. It has to be, because it’s the only thing keeping out the too-thin air of the Moon. It does not shake.

Water sloshes around his ankles. Salt water, liquid, filled with plants that tickle the bottom of feet. Beneath the water is a thin layer of sand that barely covers the machinery that draws out the water to be used for the showers before it is pumped back into the tank again. The highest form of efficiency and practicality, though Aquaman had to be convinced for days to allow ‘his’ ocean water to be repurposed this way.

Bruce’s feet are making tiny ripples on the water’s surface. His fingers drag against the glass. He throws his head back, bites out the groan slowly wrangling its own out of his throat, as Clark thrusts inside him. Slow, deliberate, spreading him open with a precise centimetre every two seconds. His legs kick outwards. Glass doesn’t shake.

“ _Bastard_ ,” Bruce growls. Fingers move from glass to invulnerable skin, but the smoothness and security remains the same. But there’s this too: a rumble at the back of his neck, the barest glance of teeth, as Clark laughs at him.

“You like me being a bastard,” Clark says, all Midwest-friendliness even as he clutches at Bruce’s hips and pulls him backwards, impaling him fully onto his cock. Bruce grits his teeth, fingers digging uselessly into invulnerable flesh as he tries to keep his head from dropping onto Clark’s shoulder.

“That’s the only reason why you came to the Watchtower still smelling of Catwoman’s cunt.”

The word, so fucking filthy that it almost stains the recycled air of the satellite, sends a shudder through him. Bruce kicks his feet, claws his hands, looking for some kind of grip, some kind of grounding, but there’s only Clark and he’s moving them away from the glass, denying Bruce any kind of solidity.

His cock is hard, leaking between his legs. He growls again, jaw aching as he clenches tight around Clark inside him.

“Maybe I just like fucking her,” he spits out. “Maybe I _like_ it, pinning her to Gotham’s rooftop, pulling off her clothes, and fucking her knowing that you can hear it.”

Being with Clark is always like striking a match – there’s always a chance he can get burned. But toying with him, sinking words like a knife into that possessiveness of his – it’s sticking his hand into the fire.

And Clark knows; knows that he’s being manipulated. Because he’s slamming Bruce face-first into the glass, holding his head there with his fingers tangled into his hair. His other hand is on Bruce’s hips, grip tight enough for bones to touch through layers of flesh and skin, and he draws out and thrusts back in hard enough to make Bruce’s teeth _shake_.

“You know, I’m so tempted to leave you like this,” Clark says, sounding conversational even as he slams into Bruce over and over again, his cock sliding in and out of his hole and avoiding his prostate by precisely by a single inch. “Tempted to leave you here. Or fly back to Gotham and bring you to her, dropping you by her feet with your hole open and your cock leaking.”

He’s buried deep inside Bruce now, rotating his hips instead of thrusting, skimming the edges of the spot, practically circling it.

Bruce laughs. He turns around, catching alien-blue eyes with his own as he bares his teeth. “You won’t, because you can’t fucking stand the thought of anyone else having their cock inside me. Even if it’s plastic.”

“Mm,” Clark nods, agreeable. His teeth scrapes over Bruce’s neck. The Kryptonian cloth of his uniform slides over Bruce’s skin as he plasters himself fully against Bruce’s back. “There’s that.”

His fingers leave Bruce’s hair; trails heat down his spine before circling his hole, right where they are joined. He pushes another finger inside, forcing Bruce to open even further, and he twists his hand and scrapes his thumb over the oversensitised, swollen edges of his entrance.

Pain snaps through his body, and Bruce gasps, shuddering hard in Clark’s arms. His hands claw at glass.

“Bastard,” Clark tells him, sounding fond. “If you wanted me to hurt you, you could’ve just asked.”

He drives inside Bruce again, his finger twisting and pulling and forcing his muscles to stretch further than it ever has; his teeth brushes over Bruce’s naked skin over and over, too rough, too strong, until Bruce can feel the blood rushing to the surface; his hand grips Bruce’s chest, fingers digging past flesh and skin to place so much pressure on the ribs that they threaten to break.

It’s not enough. It’s a dim lightbulb when he wants to be swallowed by an exploding star.

Bruce throws his head back, deliberately brushing the ends of his hair against Clark’s neck, right where it’s exposed by his uniform.

“Not good enough,” he growls. 

Clark laughs again, and the sound is dark and heavy. And suddenly, he’s gone, his body separating from Bruce’s, leaving him free-falling. Bruce hits the water. Salt rushes into his mouth, down his throat. His head spins, instincts screaming even as he kicks out, trying to reach for the surface.

But Clark is there. Clark, with his hand on Bruce’s shoulder, holding him down. Clark with his eyes, scorching the water around him until it’s scalding, exploding into steam, pain surround him, caressing every inch of his skin.

In the water, half-drowned, Bruce can’t even think to scream. But he tries, mouth open, throat open, water rushing in, and Clark is pulling him out, slamming his back against the glass, impaling him with his cock. He’s being kissed now, water being drawn out of his throat and _lungs_ by the sheer force of Clark’s inhale. He’s choking, fighting for breath, and Clark is breathing out again, oxygen filling his mouth and rushing down to feed his lungs.

Invulnerable fingers find the skin of his neck, right above the pulse, and _twists_.

Bruce comes with his body hovering between life and death, pressed against glass that’s the only thing that keeps him from the chill of the Moon, and a man who could kill him just by thinking about him mapping the insides of his mouth with his tongue.

He’s shuddering as he comes down from the high, his eyes heavy-lidded. His breathing is a complete wreck, his heart thundering in his ears. 

Clark smiles at him, half-sweet. He pushes Bruce’s legs upwards, lifting thighs and calves out of the water. He leans in again, his kiss sweet and gentle, as he fucks him. Bruce has come, his insides oversensitive, but Clark isn’t letting go, claiming him with each thrust of his cock, the sound of it obscene. Bruce hears himself groaning, hears himself ask for _more, yes, please_ , as his body shakes and control falls entirely from his shaking hands.

When Clark comes, he’s thrashing, fists making staccato, helpless thumps against the glass. His body, strung tight like a wire, finally relaxes as he feels the rush of heat, painting his insides, claiming him as Clark’s and Clark’s alone.

“You smell like salt,” Clark murmurs. He doesn’t need to breathe, but his pants are loud in Bruce’s ear. His lashes are dripping with water, droplets turned diamond from the brightness of his eyes. “You don’t smell like her anymore.”

Every inhale he takes makes his chest ache. But he leans forward, teeth nipping Clark’s lips.

“I smell like the sea,” he drawls. “I smell like Arthur.”

Clark stares at him for a moment before he laughs, shoulders shaking with the force of his mirth.

“Bastard,” he says, pulling Bruce’s head back by his hair and devouring his mouth. “You fucking _bastard_.”

Bruce lets his mouth be taken, wills his entire body to be pliant, leaning forward and resting his entire weight upon Clark.

“I’m bad for you,” he says once he can again.

Clark blinks. He raises his hand. With two fingers, he strokes from the side of Bruce’s face down his jaw, stopping right at the racing pulse. His smile is dark, and pleased.

“Exactly.”


	16. knowing what love is

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
>  
> 
> Hermann Hesse (from [aseaofquotes](http://www.aseaofquotes.com/post/107833523913/hermann-hesse))

Whenever Bruce visits his parents, he will pass by his father’s grave first. There are days when he would spend hours in front of his father’s tombstone, speaking to him without voice, mouthing the words he hopes his father will hear. On those days, he will lean against his mother’s tombstone, trying to find her gentle touch from the cold rock.

Today isn’t one of those days. Today, he holds a bouquet of wild roses from the Manor’s gardens. He rests a hand on his father’s stone, “Sorry, Dad, but it’s Mom’s day today,” and takes the single step required to stand in front of his mother’s.

He lays down the bouquet. “Happy Mother’s Day, Mom,” he whispers. He always speaks aloud when it’s her, his eyes cast down. Today is the same, and his bared fingers brushes the edge of a petal. “I hope that, even as happy as you are in Heaven, you haven’t forgotten about me.”

The wind rustles through the leaves. Only silence greets him, but Bruce is used to that. He takes a deep breath, plunging a hand into his pocket before he puts the device down, switching it on. It doesn’t make any sound – anything that can be picked up by _his_ hearing, anyhow.

“It’s just a precaution. You never know who is listening. And, believe me, I think there’s going to be one person who _can_ listen in even without trying, and there’s nothing I’m going to say that he’ll want to hear.”

Shifting slightly, he sits down on the well-tended grass. His back leans against the tombstone, fingers sinking into the earth. It’s not enough to make him feel his mother’s touch again, but it’s almost good enough to make him feel closer to her.

“You know, despite his eavesdropping tendencies, I think you would like him,” he says. “He calls himself Superman – a pretty silly name, isn’t it? – but it suits him. His powers are… otherworldly. So is he. He’s an alien.

“No, Mom, I don’t mean alien in the sense that he’s a foreigner. I mean he’s an _actual_ alien, from outer space. Dad would’ve gotten a huge kick from that, wouldn’t he? He was the one who showed me the stars, after all. I know that Dad would’ve liked him just for that. But, Mom… you’ll like him for another reason.

“I met him a year ago. I know, I’m sorry, I didn’t talk to you about him until now. But there wasn’t anything to say that’d make you happy. Our first meeting involved me sticking a bomb inside my own chest and threatening him with it. ‘Touch me, and an innocent will die,’ I said.” He laughs, low and deep beneath his breath. “It’s a joke, I know. Me, an innocent? You and Dad are probably the only ones who still think I’m that. Even Alfred doesn’t.

“Alfred’s fine, by the way. I wouldn’t know what to do without him. But I’m here to talk about Superman. See, the reason for the bomb trick was this: I wasn’t kidding when I said that his powers are otherworldly. He can move faster than the speed of light; control gravity until he can fly; he shoots heat out of his eyes and ice from his mouth. He can hear sounds from the other side of the world and see through everything except lead. And I’m pretty sure that he can benchpress Jupiter.

“A man like that, and you’ll expect him to try to conquer the world. But he doesn’t, you know that? He doesn’t. He tries to save it. He rescues kittens from trees, catches people falling from buildings, talk suicides out of ending their own lives… And, Mom, I know you don’t like it when I say this, but I don’t believe in God. Not anymore. But he…

“He makes me believe. Not in God, not really, but in the possibility of there being something _good_ in the world. Because…”

Bruce sighs, shaking his head. Closing his eyes, he leans further back against the tombstone, uncaring about the grass stains that’s getting all over his suit. “You know, I think that Dad would’ve liked him as Superman, or even Kal-El, his Kryptonian name – that’s the name of the planet he came from, by the way, Krypton. But, Mom, you… you would’ve liked him better as Clark. Clark Kent, the name his adoptive Earth parents gave him.” 

Turning his head, he presses his lips right beside the engraved name, lowering his voice as if telling a secret: “Just between the two of us, I like him better as Clark too.

“Clark Kent grew up in a small town in Kansas named Smallville. He is the son of wheat farmers. His mother bakes apple pies. His father does farm work with an old, weather-beaten tractor. He grew up wanting to become a reporter, and he _is_ now a reporter – the Daily Planet, one of the last honest news agencies. He tries to save the world by writing articles and exposés. He travelled the world trying to find a way to make a difference.”

Softly, he laughs. “Yes, he _did_ write home during his travels. He’s not like me.” His voice trails off. “He’s not like me at all.”

His chest hurt, like a hand reaching deep inside, past the barrier of bones, and squeezing. Bruce sighs again, this time from the depth of his chest.

“You would’ve loved him, Mom. He’s the kind of guy that every girl wishes to bring home to their parents. And I…”

The words are there, right in his throat. But even to his mother, even to the woman he knows he can tell everything to because she will smile and draw her arms around him, he can’t tell this to her. He simply can’t. A part of him wonders if it’s because he knows that his idea of his parents are overly idealised, a child’s image of the two gods who sheltered him, but that’s not the reason.

Even as a child, he had always shied away from words. They are too heavy, and tastes too plastic-false on his tongue.

“He’s in love with a woman named Lois Lane, I think,” he says instead, deliberately keeping his voice light. He doesn’t want to worry his mother. “She’s a reporter. Fierce, passionate, with a wit sharper than a knife. For all that he’s a farmboy, Clark has good taste.”

The wild roses in their neat bouquet seems to mock him from where they lie on the ground. Bruce bites his lip before he reaches out, pulling loose the ribbon until the flowers sprawl over grass. He balls the tissue used for the bouquet, shoving it all into his pocket before he starts to rearrange the flowers on his mother’s grave.

“These are your favourite flowers. I tried to have them grown here, but they keep dying, no matter how hard I try. I bring them every time I come to visit and…. I hope that’s good enough.”

His finger pricks upon one of the thorns. The pain barely registers, and he stares at the welling blood, smearing it on his skin before he wipes it clean on a grass blade. His mother is dead; she isn’t here to kiss his wounds anymore.

“Wherever you are, Mom, I hope that you can see him. I hope that you can watch over Clark. He probably doesn’t need that much help, given that he’s invulnerable and incredibly powerful, but… it’ll make you happy, I think, to watch him.”

Leaning in, he brushes his lips over his mother’s name. Then he pushes himself away, picking up the device and standing up.

“Happy Mother’s Day. I hope that you don’t mind if I take some of the flowers from the Manor’s gardens. Lois’s birthday is coming up soon, and Clark is going to need help if he’s going to win her.”

He takes one step from his mother, and stands in front of his father’s tombstone.

“If you were listening, Dad… I’ll try to find more information about Krypton. I’ll tell you about it next month. That’s a good Father’s Day present for you, I think.”

Bruce drops his hands onto the gravestones, feeling the chill of them and shivering from the spring winds that creeps through his clothes. There is no warmth here, no matter how hard he tries to grasp onto the memories.

He turns his head to the sun. Up there, somewhere, Clark is probably basking in the sunlight, catching its last rays before twilight comes. If Bruce half-closes his eyes, he can practically see him.

In the distance, he hears the car approaching. Bruce turns his back on his parents, walking down the hilltop cemetery. Back to Alfred, back to an empty Manor where he’ll wait for the night to come and the vermin to crawl on the streets.

Back to where he can pretend that he is used to the cold, and the too-far tease of sunlight has never called to him.


	17. borrowed words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a prompt by [Hisbabygirl18](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/23424479): “Amnesia Clark/Kal and only Bruce can remind him of their love and so his memories.” Again, I took a lot of liberties with the prompt. I hope you like it anyway.

There is a stranger standing in front of Kal-El. 

He is not sure at _all_ about the previous sentence: not if the stranger is standing at all; not if he is a stranger; and not even if his own name is Kal-El.

All he remembers is this: a few hours ago, he has woken up with faces looming over him and a mind completely blank. He panicked then, immediately, and fire had shot out of his _eyes_ – red fire, bright and scorching, and yet his hands were not burnt when he tried to stop it.

It is the woman with black hair and blue eyes who told him his name. The look on her face – pure, unadulterated shock – when he told her he doesn’t remember his own name had stuck to Kal’s mind, refusing to leave. He hates that look; hates that he’s the one who caused it.

Maybe that’s why he had taken her hand and allowed himself to be led back to this… this metal-and-glass contraption that hangs in the middle of space, looking down upon the Earth. Why he hadn’t allowed a single protest to pass his lips for all that had happened since he had woken up.

“He was hit by a spell,” the woman is saying, sounding frustrated and worried. “’His memories have been locked away to a place that only his true love’s kiss will be able to find,’ the witch said before she disappeared.”

The stranger shakes his head, looking irritated. “So call Lois Lane,” he says. His voice is like gravel and dust made into sound, rumbling deep in his chest. Kal blinks, his hand twitching before he lets it fall back to his side.

That voice has sounded more familiar than anything else he has heard so far.

“We did,” a young man answers the stranger. _Kyle_ , the boy’s name is; Kyle who is dressed in green with a strange, angular mask on his face. “It was the first thing we did. We even managed to convince Su- _Kal_ to kiss her. But it didn’t work.”

He hesitates, then presses onward. “She’s the one who asked us to call you, actually.”

“You called me here to kiss him,” the stranger says. His voice sounds flat, but incredulity practically pours off of him.

“Uh,” Kyle says, rubbing a hand at the back of his neck. “Not… really?”

The mask the stranger wears is thick woven darkness, but Kal is suddenly sure that he is raising an eyebrow.

“Explain.”

“We’re hoping that you can help him regain control of his powers,” the woman – _Diana_ , Kal reminds himself – cuts in. “Out of all of the League, you’re the one who knows them best.”

The stranger doesn’t reply. Kal looks at him, wreathed in black as he is, then down to himself. He’s dressed in primary colours, bright and blinding, and he wonders wryly just why _this_ man has to be the one to teach him to control the fire from his eyes (or the ice from his mouth, and the tendency he has to start hovering in mid-air, or even how he breaks things without meaning to-)

“Uh, if he’s going to help me,” he speaks up finally, looking down to make sure that his feet are touching the ground. “I’d like to know his name.”

“He’s—” the woman begins, but the stranger cuts her off.

“Batman,” he says. “It’s Batman.”

_That’s not true_ , a voice pipes up suddenly inside Kal. Kal’s eyes widen involuntarily, and he squeezes them shut, trying to chase that voice. But, like smoke, it’s gone. All that’s left is the burning sensation deep within his sockets; a sign he learned over the past hour to herald the fire.

“If you can help me,” he says, teeth gritted, “then I’ll really like you to.”

He can’t see what happens next. There’s only a flurry of movement, then the steady sound of footsteps moving in front of him. He can hear Batman’s heartbeat, Kal realises suddenly. He can _hear_ it and the rhythm is digging straight into him, sending warmth throughout his limbs. 

It takes all of his control to not shiver. And he doesn’t even know why he’s trying not to.

“Alright,” Batman says. “I’ll stay with him while the rest of you look for the witch. Have you contacted Zatanna or Jason Blood yet?”

“We have,” he hears Diana reply. “They’re already looking.”

After a few more moments, Kal hears them leave. Their footsteps are not in sync with their heartbeats, he thinks inanely, and wonders why this even matter.

“Clark,” Batman says.

Unbidden, Kal’s eyes fly open. He slaps a hand over them immediately. When he’s sure that he’s not going to lose control, he peeks through his fingers.

“I thought my name is Kal-El,” he says, tentative.

Batman swings around, his entire body tensing as he stares at where Diana and Kyle have left. For the briefest moment, he exudes danger, _rage_ , and Kal finds his mouth hanging open and words in his throat before he can even think.

“Like a living shadow.”

“What?” Batman whirls back to face him.

“You… you’re like a living shadow,” Kal repeats, stumbling over the words. “When you move, it is like a jungle cat sighting its prey. Your eyes…” he reaches out towards them. “I can’t see them, but I- somehow, I _know_ that they’ll look like: a thunderstorm.”

The words feel achingly familiar in his chest, but the shapes of them are strange in his mouth. As if he has kept them inside for an age or more, and has never dared to speak them until now.

He swallows hard. Batman is staring at him, the white lenses of his mask flashing underneath the fluorescent lights. He’s completely frozen, so still that he resembles a statue carved out of obsidian – or the dark side of the moon, Kal thinks – more than a man.

Finally, he speaks.

“They said that you don’t remember anything.”

“I don’t,” Kal replies. His hands are clenched tight by his sides, and he feels as if his very being is unravelling- no, _untangling_. “I don’t even know if Kal-El is my name, or if Clark is. But I…. I remember _you_.”

_His memories have been locked away to a place that only his true love’s kiss will be able to find._ Diana’s words – the _witch’s_ words, the witch he doesn’t even remember meeting. He stares down at his hands.

Hoarsely, he says, “Can I… can I try kissing you?”

There’s a tiny part of him screaming inside, _no, no, no, you can’t, I can’t_. But there’s a much larger part of him drowning it out, a part that’s urging him forward, stumbling on unsteady feet, as he grasps Batman’s wrist.

All that is beneath his skin is leather. Leather and thin, tight-woven Kevlar. And yet Kal finds himself shivering from the sparks that have ignited in his spine.

“You’re going to regret this,” Batman tells him. His voice is even, but his heartbeat has turns into roaring war drums. “And so will I.”

Kal licks his lips. “That’s not a no,” he points out.

Batman pauses for a long moment. He’s weighing out the possible options, Kal knows, the knowledge rising within him like the tides drawn towards the moon. He holds his breath.

“I can erase the camera footage,” Batman says musingly. “I can even cook up an excuse that Diana and the rest can buy. But I can only hope that you will not remember this after your memories came back.”

Then, before Kal can react, there is a leather in his hair, an arm around his neck, and he’s being pulled forward. He gasps, and in that one moment, his breath sinks into a hot mouth, and heated air flies into his lungs. An exchange of _life_ , so much more than lips touching, and Clark finds himself trembling.

He wrenches himself away, panting hard as if he has just spent the last hour towing Jupiter. He sits down onto his knees, still staring at his hands as they claw without strength at the floor of the Watchtower. Without even the tiny _click_ of a lock opening, the memories rush back into his mind.

Batman- _Bruce_ is still standing there. Clark looks blankly ahead before he registers that those feet are stepping backwards, moving _away_ , and he flings himself towards the other man, grabbing shoulder and cape and anything he can touch, pinning Bruce down to the ground.

“My true love,” he says, and the mixture of joy and bitterness and sheer _ache_ is almost enough to make his heart break.

“There’s no such thing, Clark,” Bruce says. Annoying bastard that he is, his voice is as steady as it is when he first walked into Clark’s quarters. But Clark knows how to control his abilities now; he can _listen_ , and that heartbeat is still beating faster than war drums.

“Bruce,” he murmurs. He leans down, stopping an inch before their lips touch because Bruce has a hand free and he’s moving towards his belt.

“Don’t be stupid,” Bruce says harshly. “Remember your _wife_ , Clark.”

“I remember,” Clark says, and he does. He remembers Lois’s passion; remembers the brilliance of her eyes whenever she smiles at him. He remembers, too, the way she had looked when she had pulled away from him, when the spell didn’t break. He hadn’t understood it then, but he understands now: she had looked at him with resignation and fondness and frustration and everything in between.

“So let me go,” Bruce is saying.

“No,” Clark shakes his head. Using his speed to the fullest, he grabs Bruce’s hand and places it gently to the ground. “I can’t, Bruce.”

“Please, enlighten me.”

“I can’t,” he repeats. “Not when I know that when I go back to my apartment, I would find Lois’s things gone, and the ring I gave her on the coffee table.”

There is, he thinks, a special kind of satisfaction in rendering Batman speechless. He wants to smirk, or even to smile, but his lips won’t work.

_My true love_ , he thinks again. This time, he swallows them back, and says instead:

“All those words I said, all that I used to describe you… that’s always how I’ve thought of you, Bruce.” He stares at the ground an inch from Bruce’s face. “I’ve spent days thinking up of the perfect words to describe you, and they’re still not enough. And I’ve… I’ve never told you, because I was afraid.”

“Of what?” Bruce asks

_Having what I’ve wanted since the moment I met you_ , Clark thinks. But that’s not the answer he can give. Not now, when Bruce’s body is tense beneath his.

“Of being called a ridiculous, overly sentimental idiot, I guess,” he says, shrugging with false casualness.

There’s a moment of silence. The air hangs still between them, barely broken by their shallow breaths. Clark continues to stare at the ground. He hates it. He wishes that the floor is carpeted, or at least tiled, so there are at least _some_ details that can distract him.

Then there is a hand on his cheek, tilting his head back. Clark holds his breath. He doesn’t dare to turn on his x-ray vision to look through Bruce’s cowl.

“When he gives you a piece of your soul,” he murmurs.

Clark almost laughs. He turns his head, nuzzling those leather-covered fingers. “That you never knew was missing,” he continues.

Bruce’s shoulders shake so very slightly. Clark lets himself grin, just a little. “I have one more,” he says, leaning in and lowering his voice. 

“The most powerful weapon on Earth is the human soul on fire.”

“From the sixteenth century to the nineteenth,” Bruce drawls. “That’s some leap you made there.”

“I would’ve thought that you would take more offence at the jump from a poet to a soldier,” Clark shoots back.

They look at each other for a moment. Then Bruce nods, and Clark moves backwards, pulling him up. Bruce doesn’t try to turn again, doesn’t try to pull away, and Clark lets out a shuddering breath before he wraps his arm around Bruce’s shoulder, holding him close and cautiously resting his cheek against the edge of the cowl.

“What will you do about this, Clark?” Bruce asks.

If it’s anyone else, they wouldn’t have heard the minute tremor in his voice. Not even Kara would have.

Clark closes his eyes. Behind his lids, he sees: Lois in their shared apartment, packing her bags, lips curved upwards in a bittersweet smile as she pulls off her ring and places it on the coffee table. His heart aches from it, and yet…

He licks his lips.

“You own my apartment,” he says. “Well, you own my entire apartment building. So drop by more often. My couch is going to be too big just for one person.”

Bruce’s breath huffs against his neck; something that’s almost a laugh. “You’re such a farmboy,” he says.

“How about this instead?” Clark says, pulling back. He reaches out his hands, sliding over the catches beneath Bruce’s cowl. No hands come up to stop him, so he tugs it backwards and finally meets those thunderstorm-blue eyes.

“No matter where we go from here, we’ll do it together.”

Bruce cocks his head. “Do you think we can take them?” he asks, and the lilt in his voice is _definitely_ a full-blown laugh.

Clark throws his head back, shoulders shaking as chuckles spill from him. Somehow, he feels lighter, as if a burden he has carried for an age has been lifted off his shoulders.

He brushes Bruce’s cheeks, and says,

“You always think we can take them.”

They lean towards each other, drawn together like two magnets. His forehead meets Bruce’s, and Bruce smells of salt and sweat, musky and irresistible.

He has never needed the perfect words, Clark realises. Words borrowed from obscure texts only they have read; words prompting the countless memories they have shared – that’s all they have ever needed.

When Bruce tilts his head up, eyes glinting a challenge, Clark laughs again and takes the invitation as it is meant, pressing their mouths together.

He’s going to send that witch a gift once she is found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > “Love is when he gives you a piece of your soul, that you never knew was missing.” _Torqueto Tasso_.  
>  “The most powerful weapon on Earth is the human soul on fire.” _Ferdinand Foch_.  
>  “Do you think we can take them—” oh, hell, you know this one.
> 
> **PS:** This is the longest snippet (~2370 words) yet. Damn, writing happy endings take forever. 


	18. dream-written letters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
> Second post by @the-diggler [here](http://the-diggler.tumblr.com/post/110037585434/bruce-wayne-constructs-his-own-fucking-machine-to). 
> 
> Both prompts have been twisted to fit my own ideas of Clark and Bruce. I hope you both like it still anyway!

The vice around his cock is tight and hot and wet, the body beneath his trembling and gasping. Clark reaches out blindly, finding shoulders and sides and scars-rough skin beneath his hands. He leans in, kissing the body beneath his hard, his hips driving forward without thinking. The moan that tumbles out of that mouth is a familiar voice wrapped around his name, the edges shattering:

_“Clark_. _”_

Bruce. It’s Bruce, and has always been, and Clark bites down on those lips, keeping his control tightly leashed as his hand wraps around a thick, throbbing cock. He strokes fast and hard, shifting almost into super-speed, and Bruce writhes beneath him, practically mindless. He’s close now, Clark knows; so very close to losing of his control.

His arm wraps around the slim, strong waist, pulling Bruce backwards, impaling him fully. Bruce groans, and Clark whispers his name in his ear. His teeth finds the strong pulse drumming in his ears, biting down and—

He wakes up panting, legs tangled in his bedsheets, his hands trembling. He stares down at his hands: they are shaking hard, clenching and unclenching because he no longer has anyone to grab, and Clark bites down on his own lip this time, drawing blood to flood his mouth.

The metal and bitterness is familiar. So is the feel of his own too-smooth hands on his cock, jerking himself off.

When he comes down from the high, he stares blankly ahead of him, hands covered in sticky-white and feeling filth coat the insides of his skin. 

This has to stop, he tells himself. It has been happening for more than a week by now, and it’s affecting his ability to work with Bruce. He has been making mistakes – small ones, but significant, nonetheless, because he’s in a job where mistakes are not tolerated.

But he has no idea how to make the dreams stop.

He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment before he hears someone yelling for help, and he pulls himself together, pieces ragged and bleeding, before he heads for the bathroom.

*

Bruce’s arms and legs tremble on the bed as he swallows back the sounds he wants to make. The length inside him thrusts forward relentlessly, scraping across his prostate, and he throws his head back and pants. Pulls himself backwards on his knees, leaning until he’s grabbing onto metal for steadiness as he fists his own cock hard enough to make pain burst behind his eyes.

His lips form a name, soundless and secret, and he lets out a strangled moan as he comes. White covers his vision for a moment, and he drops back down onto the mattress, instincts fighting for breath.

The cock is still moving rhythmically inside him. Bruce sighs explosively, turning back and switching the machine off with hands minutely trembling from the overstimulation. It turns off and the room is plunged back into silence, leaving Bruce here in the cot in a secret corner of the Cave, entirely alone and covered in his own spunk.

“Pathetic,” he says out loud.

It’s not anything new he has to say about himself. Bruce’s lips thin involuntarily, and he stares at the machine in front of him.

At first glance, it doesn’t look like anything that’s made for sex. Boxy, cobbled entirely out of metal, it looks more of a half-hearted grade-school attempt at a science project than anyting else. This isn’t entirely deliberate: while Bruce does value secrecy and discretion, part of the haphazard look of the machine is due to how quickly he made it.

A week ago, the dreams came. Five days ago, he started building the machine as a replacement, because the dreams are far more dangerous than just having a dildo up his ass. In those dreams, he’s never alone, and he has learned to be wary of a familiar voice speaking his name in a way that he knows will never happen in reality.

Reaching out, he unlatches the silicon dildo from the rest of the machine. Stepping down from the bed, he heads towards the bathroom, back straight and steps steady even as each step intensifies the ache that he feels.

He has to get back to work. The dreams are coming from _somewhere_ , and they feel extremely familiar. Bruce is close – very close – to finding the source. And when he does…

Well, nothing will stop him from breaking the face of the monster who is fucking with his mind like this. 

(Who is taking those desires he feels, buried as they are beneath thorns and barbed wires and heavily-fortified walls, and twisting them into this. 

If he is a man capable of admitting to what he wants, he knows full well that the sex has never been what he wants.

If he is a man capable of being completely honest even to himself, he knows that the sex is never what he _needed_.)

*

John Dee walks amongst the sleeping. If in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King, then he, the only man awake and aware amongst those unconscious, is King too.

He sits on his spider-web throne, the world spread out to him with threads that he can curl his fingers around and tug at any time. And now, smiling to himself, he draws his fingers beneath two of them, twining them around his fingers and making the threads jerk by his will.

The shields around these particular minds are far too strong for him to penetrate through. They are built of high stone walls, sharp thorns and electrified wires, and while the self-proclaimed King of this unconscious kingdom knows he can strengthen himself at any point to climb those walls, he doesn’t want to. He isn’t _going_ to.

Because he wants the eyes who sees the reaction of these men to be real eyes. He wants to see the pain he is surely causing.

_Kill him_ , he whispers to one thread, the one with crystals dripping like water. _Kill him. Take his life the way you always want to. Fulfil your heart’s desire_.  
 _  
_He brings the other thread upwards. This one is so dark that it seems woven from the night itself, with sparks of light like stars. _Destroy him_ , he murmurs. _You know he’s a threat. Bring him down to your level. Like you always wanted to_.

Checking the knots where the threads are joined, he settles them back on his spider-web throne. Then Doctor Destiny steps back outwards, sinking into unconsciousness himself.

He dreams of the brokenness on Superman’s face when he knows that he has murdered Batman and could not take those words back. He dreams of Batman, the only one who has denied him, and how he will look when he’s shattered beneath Superman’s fists, the same fists he has invited to his body with his frantic attempts to destroy the Kryptonian saviour of the Earth.

(But John Dee never realises this: there are many forms of passion, only one of which is named hatred.)


	19. game, set

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
> _Matches Malone_

The bar is ratty and run-down, and Clark, in his ill-fitting but still clean suit and glasses, sticks out like a sore thumb. He tries his best to not worry his lip, instead lifting the beer he has bought. Honestly, he’s no expert on alcohol – he doesn’t drink much – but he’s pretty sure that beer isn’t supposed to be so thin, or smell like piss.

On the edges of his hearing, he can hear the sounds of people laughing, cursing, spitting on the alley walls. Their slang is distinctively New Jersey, but the sharp edges of their accents have been slightly blunted by Delaware. If not for the darkness audible even in the voices alone, Clark would’ve thought himself in Metropolis.

But this is Gotham. Not even the Suicide Slums have bars like these.

He’s here in the city because Perry wanted a follow-up article on the one he published on the Suicide Slum a couple of weeks ago. Though Clark hopes that he can uncover the corruption here like he did back in his home city, he genuinely doubts that he can: there seems to be so _much_ here that he doesn’t know where to begin.

That’s not the reason why he’s in the bar, though. And speaking of the reason…

The man who walks into the bar draws all attention around him. Whether it is because of his ugly suit-shirt-tie combination (camel-brown blazer with an orange tie – even Clark, who wears primary colours, knows that to be a terrible combination), or the match dangling from his lips and the glasses covering his eyes that he doesn’t take off, or his height and stature, or even the _swagger_ he uses to walk… every single person in the bar turned to look.

Matches Malone doesn’t seem to notice. He only waves to the bartender, shouting a “whiskey coke” to him before he drops down to sit opposite Clark on the table.

“Mind if I smoke?” His accent is pure New Jersey, syllables chopped up and pieces swallowed. 

“I…” Clark clears his throat, uncomfortably aware of the eyes on them. “I do mind, actually.”

Chuckling, Matches draws out a cigarette from his pockets. It’s squashed and clearly self-rolled, and Clark spends a moment wondering just _what_ is in it before Matches draws out the match and sticks the cigarette in. He strikes the match against the edge of the table before he lights the stick, taking a deep drag and deliberately blowing the smoke towards Clark’s face.

It feels like a caress.

“Too bad,” Matches drawls.

Clark coughs, waving his hand in his face. He leans back as the bartender sets down Matches’s order in front of him.

“Now that we’ve gotten these nice li’l pleasantries out of the way…” Matches lifts his glass to his mouth. Clark watches, fascinated, as he licks the rim. 

“What do you want from me, Kent?” 

_Plenty_ , Clark thinks, staring at that mouth. The lips are wet with spit and alcohol, darkened by the coke. A single droplet drips downwards, and a pink tongue darts out to lick it back up. Matches swallows down the alcohol like it’s nirvana in a glass, making the softest of groans beneath his breath.

“I’m here to learn about the parts of Gotham that most people don’t know about,” Clark says, forcing his voice to be steady. “The crimes that happen on the streets that’s…”

“That has nothing to do with the mad fuckers locked up in Arkham?” Matches finishes for him, arching an eyebrow so it’s visible above his glasses. He laughs again, low and dark, shaking his head. “You’re a Metropolis guy aren’t you, Kent?”

“You already know that,” Clark points out.

“Mm, but you make it obvious,” Matches says, shrugging. He sweeps a hand outwards. “The kind of crimes you’re talking about, Kent, everyone here already knows. That’s why the good citizens don’t go out after dark. That’s why those who have to like to carry guns or knives.” He smiles, all teeth. “For protection, you see.”

Clark swallows, eyes scanning Matches’s body. He doesn’t dare to turn on his x-ray vision to check if the man is packing beneath his jacket; he doesn’t want to think about the ramifications if he _is_.

“If you help me with my article, maybe those in Metropolis will want to help,” he tries.

Matches’s smile grows even sharper, and he throws his head back and laughs. It’s raucous, sounding like scraping knives.

“Your city needs Gotham to be a shithole to make herself look better,” Matches says, dropping his head into a hand. “All your article will do is to confirm that it _is_ and make them feel better.”

Pressing his lips into a line, Clark resists the urge to defend his city. He reaches out for his beer, taking a long gulp of it before making a face.

“The beer here is shit,” Matches says helpfully, pushing his own glass of whiskey forward. “Try this. It’s better.”

It’s the first overture of anything resembling friendliness that Clark has received from this man, so he doesn’t think he can refuse. Still, he hesitates for a moment before picking up the glass and sipping on it.

“Ballantine’s whiskey with actual coke and not that fucking diet shit,” Matches clarifies. “Best thing in this place.”

Clark wonders if Matches asked around, or if that statement is made out of experience. He decides not to ask. Instead, he clenches his hands around the edge of the table and makes to stand.

“If you will not give me an interview, Mr. Malone, there is no point in me staying here,” he says.

Matches’s hand grips onto his wrist. If Clark is any other man, the nails would have broken skin.

“Come with me.”

He shouldn’t. This man is dangerous: not just physically – there’s no way he can hurt Clark that way – but with the sharpness of his words; the darkness that curls around the edges of his being; the glass-shard glint of his teeth. He’s dangerous because he might end up an addiction, and Clark has plenty of those associated with Gotham already.

But Clark finds himself moving with the hand on his wrist, letting himself be dragged out of the bar. Matches brings him to a small alley to the side. It smells of dirt and vomit and piss and, underneath the stench, the heavy metal of blood.

Clark’s breath is genuinely knocked out of his lungs when he finds himself pinned against the wall.

“You’ve been looking at me,” Matches says. Somehow during the trip, the cigarette between his lips has been replaced with another match. “It’s not just an interview that you want from me, right, Kent?”

“I,” Clark tries to say, but the words are gone, faded from his mind, the moment Matches’s hand reaches out and _grinds_ the base of his palm right over Clark’s crotch. His head smacks against filth-encrusted bricks.

“ _Jesus_ , B-” he tries, but Matches has a damned knee against his crotch now, grabbing his hands and pinning him to the wall. His grip is strong, almost bruising. And even though Clark can break out of it without making any effort, he doesn’t. He lets himself be pinned there, groaning incoherently underneath his breath as the match slides over his face.

“You like it like this, don’t you, Metropolis boy?” Matches drawls, his breath ghosting over Clark’s ear. “Secret, dirty, tucked in the dark corners where no one can see you come. All of your suspicions about Gotham confirmed, and _enjoying_ it.”

“No,” Clark protests. He tries to struggle, but Matches is strong, stronger than him. Their chests are pressed together, and Clark can feel the hammering of the man’s heart against his ribcage, a staccato beat to his own. “No, I don’t- I don’t!”

Matches chuckles. One hand leaves Clark’s wrists, moving downwards and scraping over his sides. The snap of Clark’s belt buckle loosening is loud in the alley.

“This,” Matches says, his fingers deliberate as they wrap around Clark’s cock, “says otherwise.”

Then, without further warning, Clark is free, and Matches is sinking down. His knees hit the filth of the alley, his hands tight around Clark’s ribs, and Clark bites back a whine as a hot, hot mouth wraps around his cock.

“ _Fuck_.”

He feels more than hears the moan that wrenches out of Matches. The mouth pulls off of him, teeth grazing his thigh. “Christ, to hear you swear…”

Clark gulps down air, wetting his lips. “Please,” he whispers. “Please, Mister Malone.”

The sound that Matches makes at the name is barely human, impossible to describe. He takes Clark down his throat again, his nose burying inside Clark’s curls, and Clark forces his eyes to stay open, forces them to fix upon the face of the man in front of him. His hand trails over Matches’s cheeks, over the bulge his cock makes, and he shudders hard. 

At the edge of his hearing, he can still hear the people in the bar talking. He can hear Matches’s hands on his own belt, the rasp of his pants being pulled down. He can hear the sound of flesh against flesh as Matches jerks himself off as his throat clenches rhythmically around Clark’s cock.

Clark sinks his hand into Matches’s hair. He drags it down. The glasses unbalance, falling to the ground, and bright, lightning-blue eyes look at him. He meets him, breath and heart in his throat, and the lines are blurred now, so very blurred. There are no red lines appearing beneath Matches’s clawing hand on his thigh, and Clark’s hips are rocking forward, ignoring the hand pressing him to the wall.

Whoever this man is, whatever name that he goes by, however he chooses to behave… he’s still the only one who can make Clark feel like this.

He groans again as he comes. He hears the way it slides down Matches’s throat; hears the way drips of it spills from those teasing lips and fall to the ground. And Clark wrenches himself fully from the hand, sinking to his knees, uncaring about filth and dirt because kissing Matches is more important, taking his cock in his hand feels better. The shape of it is so familiar, and his tongue cleans out the taste of himself from Matches’s mouth as he strokes hard, nail scraping over the prominent vein at the base.

When Matches comes for him, he sounds like Batman.

“Clark,” Matches says, voice hoarse and wrecked. He looks like obscenity made flesh: face flushed, lips red and swollen, spit and come on his chin. Clark feels heat crawling in his veins again.

“You have no idea what you do to me.”

A laugh wrestles itself out of Clark’s throat. He leans forward, licking at Matches’s mouth, swiping the skin clean of come and tasting the light salt of his sweat mixed with the heavy bitterness.

“I know,” he says. His arms wrap around Matches’s shoulders- _Bruce’s_ shoulders. With just a thought, they are hovering halfway out of the alley. 

“You do the same to me.”

Bruce looks at him. It’s Bruce now, truly Bruce, his eyes bright and laying himself raw and open for Clark’s inspection. He reaches out, taking Clark’s hand and licking the fingertips. White disappear into the red-tinged darkness of his mouth, and Clark shudders.

Bruce’s fingers reach down, sliding around the spit-slicked skin of his hardening cock. He smiles. It’s the Bat’s smile; the same smile he uses whenever he’s proven absolutely right.

“When we reach the Cave,” he says, his gaze steady on Clark’s. “You’re going to fuck me on the hood of my car.”

Clark breaks Mach Four.


	20. reality-carved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to Chapter 18: _dream-written letters_.

The Watchtower’s glass window captures the two of them perfectly: Bruce trapped between it and Clark’s body, leather and Kevlar straining; Clark’s eyes burning, red tinged with blue as he bites down on a still-covered shoulder as he thrusts into tight, wet heat; the fog from their breaths, blurring the sight before their next simultaneous exhales wipes it away.

Bruce is making soft little noises now, half-whimpers that are swallowed down. Clark turns his head, crushing their lips together and drawing air into his own lungs. He doesn’t need t to breathe, not really, but having the air warmed by Bruce’s body makes him feel like he _does_ need to. 

Even when he knows it’s not real. Even though he knows that the dream will end the moment he wraps a hand around Bruce’s cock and jerk him off.

“For a boy scout, you have some kinky fantasies,” a voice drawls.

Clark jerks. He pulls out of the body beneath his, turning around. 

Bruce is standing there, his uniform perfect. His head is tilted at the precise angle that suggests that his eyebrow beneath the cowl is arched. Clark gulps, his eyes darting to the other Bruce- and finds him still pressed up towards the window of the Watchtower, still making those noises, still rocking his hips back and forth as if Clark is still there.

Bile rises in his throat. He tears his eyes away from the sight, squeezing them shut before he dresses himself again at Mach 3.

“So you found out who has been doing this to us, then,” Clark says.

“To _you_ ,” Bruce says, his voice pure acid. “ _I_ had the good sense to stop sleeping.”

Clark rolls his eyes. “My apologies for not having constant practice at self-deprivation,” he says sarcastically, barely able to swallow back the barb about the world being more in danger if _he’s_ sleep-deprived than if Bruce is.

Then he blinks.

Over the years, Clark has learned how to read Bruce from the tension of his frame and the twitches of his jaw. He has learned every single tiny tell, catalogued all of them. But the sight of Bruce in front of him right now – tense, fingers half-curled, his lips parted – is one that he has never seen before.

He doesn’t have long to stare: Bruce turns his back on him, cape snapping, the sound of it cutting through the quiet, false moans of the other-Bruce still at the Watchtower windows. Clark’s nails cut into his own palm.

“Aren’t you going to tell me who is responsible for this?”

Bruce pauses. “I didn’t realise that you _want_ this to stop.”

The world flashes red.

When it clears, Clark finds himself standing close enough to Bruce to feel the heat of his body, pouring off of his heavy uniform. His hand is on Bruce’s shoulder, clenching tight. He breathes out; unlocks his jaw.

“No, I’m really enjoying not being able to sleep properly because whenever I do, I’m fucking some doll of you,” he says. And he means to stop there, he really does, but the words tumble out of him anyway-

“And not being able to see you _come_.”

Bruce turns around. His eyes, Clark knows, are narrowed. “What,” he says, so deliberate that the word is a heavy weight, “is your problem with that?”

 _All of it,_ Clark wants to hiss. Instead, he steps back, staring at Bruce for a moment before he shakes his head hard. “I’ll tell you once we’re done beating up Doctor Destiny,” he says.

A moment of silence stretches out between them. Clark tries not to twitch; shuts his hearing off entirely to those _sounds_ still coming from the puppet at the window.

“Fine.”

*

Doctor Destiny is gone. Only John Dee remains, a mere man locked up in an asylum in a permanent coma. Clark stares down at him, his hand clenching and unclenching at his side, as if trying to grasp onto the feel of that jaw breaking underneath his hand; at the feel of hot, red blood splashing over his skin. 

It feels almost _unsatisfying_ to beat up someone in the dream world.

Bruce isn’t the only one who takes joy at the sheer violence.

Speaking of Bruce, the man’s back is to Clark now. He’s going to leave, Clark knows. Leave, and the next time they meet, they’re not going to talk about this because Bruce will shut every line of conversation down.

Well, Clark isn’t going to let that happen.

Grabbing Bruce by the shoulder, Clark wraps an arm around him, pressing him to his chest before he takes towards the skies. He heads immediately to the rooftop, then past it, towards one of the few open spaces in Gotham. No buildings around; nowhere for Bruce to throw out a grapple line to if he forces himself from Clark’s grip.

And, by the way Bruce’s jaw is tensing, he knows it too.

“Let me down,” Bruce growls, the same tone of voice that has criminals pissing their pants with fear. 

Clark rolls his eyes. “All of it,” he says.

“What?”

“You asked me which part it is that I had such a problem with,” Clark clarifies, fixing his eyes on Bruce and refusing to look away. “And I’m telling you it’s all of it.”

“Doesn’t a writer know to be more specific?” Bruce drawls. His heart rate is starting to pick up.

“I don’t like fucking you when it’s a dream,” Clark decides to obey this time. “I don’t like it because one, it’s a dream; two, you never act like yourself; and three, I don’t get to see you _come_.”

His finger ghosts over the edge of Bruce’s jaw, drifting closer to just above his lips. “You have no idea what I’d do to see you come, B.” His mouth quirks upwards into a bitter smile. “I think I’ve daydreamed all the possible ways you can, and I’d like to know if I’m right at least once.”

Bruce has gone completely still. The rhythm of his heart is steady, his breaths deep and regular, but the sheer tension emanating off of him… it’s very familiar. Clark glances down, and those fingers are curled halfway.

As if Bruce is trying to reach out.

Clark shifts slightly, nudging his feet against Bruce’s heels to urge him to stand on them. When he’s surer of his grip – that he won’t let Bruce fall – he takes one of those hands, lifting them up. Slowly, gaze fixed upon Bruce’s, he opens his mouth and sucks the fingertips in.

The shudder that wreaks through Bruce’s entire body is like a live current shooting through Clark’s veins.

“I dreamt of you fucking me,” Bruce says, his voice abruptly whipping through the silence between them. “The first two nights. I dreamt of it.”

Clark holds his breath. Doesn’t say a word.

“When I woke up, I still wanted it. Couldn’t stop thinking about it. Couldn’t _work_.” There it is again, the shudder. Clark leans in, letting his breath brush over Bruce’s skin, right beneath the edge of the cowl.

“I made a machine.”

He knows the ending of this story; knows _Bruce_. But he asks, nonetheless.

“What does it do?”

“It fucks me like the way I want you to.”

“Is it enough?” Clark asks. His touch is gentle, but his words are cruel. Deliberately chosen to pry the truth out of Bruce.

Bruce shakes hard. His teeth clacks together. But he forces them open again, and says,

“No.”

“Do you want me to?”

 _No_ , Bruce’s mouth forms, but no sound escapes him. Clark waits.

“Yes.”

Turning his head, Clark slides his lips over the curve of Bruce’s ear, right where it’s hidden by Kevlar and leather.

“Do you think you can come from just being fucked?” he murmurs. “I won’t touch your cock.”

The effect on Bruce is instantaneous: he drops his head backwards, groaning low under his breath. His hand snags Clark’s cape, clenching tight on the bright red cloth. As Clark watches, his breath picks up, then evens out again, and he pulls himself back together.

His smirk is wide, full of teeth, and the most beautiful thing Clark has ever seen. He lets himself be dragged forward as Bruce digs his hand into his hair.

“ _Try me_.”


	21. taking flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Partly inspired by beizaten’s [prompt](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/23497244) about a Dom/sub universe with Bruce as a sub who was traumatised. Only partly, because this is a **wingfic** as well (as in, Clark and Bruce have wings.) 
> 
> And one more warning: this is less a fic than a snippet of a far bigger universe.

Clark leans back against the wall of the Cave, arms loosely crossed. His wings, a dark silver-grey that fades into white, shudders in the air from the tension he cannot fully dispel. The ends of them brushes some stalactites, disturbing the bats roosting there.

It’s strange.

Strange that he doesn’t only resemble humans in the shape of their faces and bodies, but with their wings as well. Not to mention the underlying biological structures that determines the differences in their wings. All humans have wings, but the majority of them have smaller ones, capable only of gliding through the skies. Only those who are considered biologically Dominant and submissive – those who keep closest to their original evolutionary roots – have flight-capable wings.

Batman’s wings have always been a sight of beauty. Feathers so dark that they seem woven from the night-sky itself, marred only with star-like spots where the skin has been torn and healed so badly that feathers never grew again. Bruce Wayne’s wings are a neutral shade of grey and brown, full and unscarred.

Bruce’s real wings are night-black, and marred not just by scars, but spots where the feathers are pure white.

“I mean it,” he says again. “About the bond.”

Bruce simply looks at him. His body language would look absolutely relaxed to everyone else, but Clark has spent nearly half of a lifetime studying this man. He can see the tension, the defensiveness, and he folds his own wings further, making himself look even smaller. It’s likely useless, but he can’t help but make the attempt anyway.

“What makes you think I’ll want to be tied down to you?” Bruce asks, cocking his head to the side.

Clark’s eyes flashes towards his wings; towards those scars and signs of trauma. They are not just indicative of injury – there are feathers are have turned completely white. It’s not a natural colour; it’s the colour of age, of fading away… or of trauma that comes from a broken mating bond, or one that was forced.

It’s impossible for him to not know. The ends of his own wings used to be a soft grey instead of stark white. They were this way only after he divorced Lois and broke their mating bond.

But he doesn’t think it’s something so simple with Bruce. No, the unevenness of the colour speaks of force, of trauma. Someone had forced him in the past. He doesn’t need the way that Bruce’s wings that lashed out at him when he tried to kiss him to know that.

“I don’t,” he says finally. “I don’t know what you want, Bruce. I only know that I’m sincere when I tell you that I love you, and that I want to stay with you forever.”

Bruce snorts. “That’s hard to believe,” he says, his eyes boring into Clark’s wingtips. “You’ve made that promise and broken it before.”

Clark can’t help it; he winces. But before Bruce can press his advantage, he lets his arms drop back to his sides. His wings spread out completely, owning practically half of the Cave before he lifts himself off the ground without them, floating forward to land in front of Bruce.

“I know I have, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t treasure the bond I had with Lois when it was there,” he says. He doesn’t reach out towards Bruce, instead folding his wings forward so that they encircle their bodies. “It doesn’t mean that I don’t treasure the memories I have with her.”

“You’re not helping your case here,” Bruce says dryly. “Who would want to have a dominant who will keep thinking of another submissive?”

Shrugging, Clark spreads out his hands. “That’s not my point,” he says, matching dryness point for point.

“Then what is?”

“That you can have me for however long this lasts,” Clark says simply, fixing his eyes on Bruce. He’s careful to not let their wings touch; that’s far too intimate, too invasive, and Bruce will only back away. “That the very moment you want to break the bond, you can.”

He takes a deep breath. “It’s up to you, Bruce. I’m leaving it up to you to initiate the mating flight.”

Even though both dominants and submissives have the capacity to initiate the mating flight, Clark knows that it’s always thought that the dominants should be the one to do so. They are the ones who hold the submissives’ lives in their hands; the ones with responsibility, the _control_. 

But Clark has never been the typical dominant. There is already too much on his shoulders for him to take on more. All he wants – what he thought he found in Lois – is for someone with strong enough wings to pull him off of his feet; someone who can catch him if he ever falls.

For someone who can hold onto his weight during a mating flight, to wrap him in their wings and make him feel enclosed and _safe_.

His eyes dart towards the dots of white on Bruce’s wings. He wonders how that had happened; wonders if the stranger had grabbed Bruce and pulled him into a mating flight without his consent. If Bruce had managed to wrench himself away after it was already done, and flown far enough and hid himself long enough that the bond strained and broke after too long a time had passed without their wings touching. 

Clark doesn’t know. He doesn’t _want_ to. His eyes and ears can find anyone in the world, and he’s afraid of his own too-strong hands. He has nightmares about finding out the one who caused those pure white feathers because their eyes are staring at him, death-glassy from a broken neck with his fingers wrapped around it. 

Bruce hasn’t say a word. Hasn’t even moved. Clark holds his breath when Bruce steps back from him. One, then another, and three, and he _shudders_ at the sound of Bruce’s wings spreading, the air shifting and brushing beneath Clark’s feathers, incongruously intimate in contrast to the stillness of his face.

“How many times did you fly with Lois before you took the mating flight, Clark?” Bruce asks.

“None,” Clark answers honestly even though he has no idea what Bruce is getting at. “I took her flying, but… it was always with my powers, and not my wings. Not with hers either.”

“Why not?”

Clark closes his eyes, tipping his head back to stare at the high, arching ceiling of the Cave. “I was selfish. And… afraid. Afraid of going too far,” he says softly. “Afraid of forcing a bond before we were ready.” He turns away, swallowing hard.

“And selfish enough to make use of my powers to fly with her.”

Silence again. Clark tries to not fidget; forcing the utmost of his control to still his wings so they would not shudder.

“Look at me, Clark,” Bruce says.

He turns.

Bruce’s gaze is heavy upon his body, trailing from his shoulders to the tips of his wings. But his hand is in the air, half-raised and half-curled, as if he’s stopping himself from reaching out. Clark hears the force in which air is dragged down his throat.

“Fly with me,” Bruce says, and Clark barely stops himself from jerking forward. “Fly with me using your wings instead of your powers. But _don’t touch me._ ” 

Clark can’t breathe.

There is a reason why all the flight-capable members of the League always use their powers to fly during missions instead of their wings even when they can. There is a reason why there is a plane sitting in the Cave, barely feet away from them, when Bruce’s wings are large and strong enough to take him everywhere in the world.

To fly together, feeling the same air currents sliding under feathers and over skin… More than sex, more than the touch of skin, flying together and feeling the same currents of air sliding over their feathers and skin is the most intimate thing any dominant can do with any submissive. Even without touch, even without hands joined, four wings turned into two to support two bodies turned into one in the air…

Bruce might as well have asked him to make him come without touching him.

Clark stares at his own hands. He should’ve known, he thinks; should’ve known that Bruce would ask the impossible when Clark asks so much of him. He thinks about flying with Lois, about always holding himself up at least a little with his powers instead of his wings, simply because he couldn’t bring himself to take that step.

“I mean it when I say no powers, Clark,” Bruce says, the evenness of his voice like a shard through Clark’s chest. “I will know if you use them.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” Clark says wryly.

He can practically hear Bruce’s shrug.

The silence between them is practically alive, and Clark knows that, this time, it’s his fault. He already knows his answer; already knows that if there is anyone who can pull so much control from him, anyone who can simultaneously relieve him of the burden of his shoulders and wind thread-tension into his nerves, it is this man.

“Okay,” he says.

Bruce doesn’t say a word more. He merely looks at Clark. There is the slightest upward curve on his lips before he turns away.

Then he’s running, running through the runway of the Cave made for the plane. His wings spread out around him, feathers glimmering in the darkness, before he jumps and sweeps out into the air.

Clark takes a deep breath. His own wings spread outwards. His feet are clumsy – it’s been too long since he has taken off by running instead of simply hovering – but he follows Bruce nonetheless, follows him out and jumping into the air, using his wings and his wings alone to propel him, sending leaves and dirt and litter flying.

Bruce is waiting for him in the skies, gliding over buildings before sweeping above them. He is the most beautiful creature Clark has ever seen, and his hands physically ache to touch. Clark follows him, wrenching tight onto his control of his powers, keeping his fingers spread instead of clenching them.

This is the most difficult test he has ever had to endure. But he knows that, no matter whether he fails or passes it, it will be one of his sweetest memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is **the end** of the Daily Superbat snippets. I have, for now, exhausted all the fic ideas that I want to write. But I might come back to it one day. \o\


End file.
